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7 - Making History: Digital Preservation and Electronic Legal Deposit in the Second Quarter of the 21st Century
- Edited by Paul Gooding, University of East Anglia, Melissa Terras, University of Edinburgh
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- Book:
- Electronic Legal Deposit
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 07 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 31 March 2019, pp 139-158
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
It is hard to imagine a more interesting time to work in libraries, nor a more challenging one. In an era of post-truth obfuscation and sinister deletion, the ability to collect, retain and authenticate is suddenly a super-power; in an era of relentless proliferation, the confidence to select and consolidate, with implied permission to relegate and deduplicate, is ubiquitously essential; in an era where data is the ‘new oil’ of the ‘information society’, the unassuming librarian holds the keys not only to the past, but now also to the future. One would have thought that this generation more than any other would be the age of the library, an enduring proof of common cause for the common weal: deposit libraries at the summit of our ambition, the record of all we have achieved and source of all we might. Why does it not feel that way?
It's not yet clear whether the digital turn will be the making of the library or its undoing, given many of these opportunities are disruptive, mostly provisional, and largely originate outside the library community. These challenges arise just at a moment where the social and economic context of operations are profoundly unsettled, whether through the continuing dysfunction of economics, the puzzling impasses of public discourse or a global crisis of dislocation and dispossession. With such uncertainty about the times in which we will shortly live, this is no time for an identity crisis. Yet there is little prospect of staying unchanged.
2018 was (another) pivotal year in the development of libraries in the UK and Ireland, a consequence of a review of the legal deposit regime. This has enabled a wider consideration of the place and function of legal deposit libraries, and a deeper dive into the evolving processes and expectations through which their mission, to provide a full and canonical copy of the published record, is fulfilled. So how can libraries help us make sense of these turbulent times and preserve a record that will help us look back on them, too? How can we ensure that legal deposit libraries and their collections will continue to thrive in the second quarter of the 21st century?
11 - Digital preservation strategies for visualizations and simulations
- Edited by Janet Delve, David Anderson
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- Book:
- Preserving Complex Digital Objects
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 13 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2015, pp 143-154
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
The participants for each POCOS session were drawn from a wide range of professional contexts concerned with digital preservation (DP), including: scientific and cultural heritage projects; private consultancies; digital assets management, including creating digital preservation policy for, inter alia, 3D models and architectural drawings; digital repository management; DP research and development; development of research-based open-source tools; digital tool preservation; long-term digital preservation; emulation research; historical research; digital humanities research; and digital imaging and digital media technologies. With this eclectic mix of contributors from a variety of user and stakeholder communities, it was important not to make assumptions about prior DP knowledge, as some participants might be very knowledgeable about DP in general but be unaware of visualization and simulation initiatives, and vice versa. With this caveat in mind, William Kilbride reviewed the main categories of challenges regarding visualizations and simulations in the DP domain, and suggested initial key responses. The groups then discussed their ideas.
The main DP challenges and key responses
The first challenge to be faced is that the issue will not go away, nor will it resolve itself. A salutary note on this subject is delineated by Gartner's Hype Cycle on the introduction of new technology, which charts levels of optimism over time. The cycle starts on the trigger point of ‘not my problem’; moves on through ‘how hard can it be’ to the Peak of Inflated Expectations; descends into misery at the Trough of Disillusion, when the scale of the task becomes apparent; then advances onto the Slope of Enlightenment followed by the Plateau of Productivity, when realistic progress is eventually realized. To avoid this roller-coaster experience, it is vital that DP plans be set out at the start of the project.
In general, digital objects such as software, simulations, visualizations and documents have value (however such ‘value’ is calculated), and they create opportunities. However, access to such objects depends on software, hardware and human intervention, and these are liable to change over time, thus resulting in technology creating barriers to re-use. Therefore it is vital to manage data in the long term to protect digital assets and create opportunities for their re-use. In particular, DP is not just about isolated topics such as ‘data’, ‘access’ and ‘risk’: rather it is paramount that DP is understood to be about outcomes, especially regarding people and opportunity.