Archivists Scramble to Save Digital Era
Archivists adjust strategies to confront changing world.
July 10, 2001 — -- Not too long ago, America's culture was recorded mainly on paper, vinyl and film, and deposited at the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office.
Nowadays, the seeds of future history may be flowing in huge volume from Web designers and content providers directly into peoples' homes, and the Library of Congress and other archivists are trying to create new systems to ensure the information is saved.
It's a big job, they say, but also a big opportunity.
"We are given an opportunity through the digital medium to create libraries and disseminate knowledge in ways never possible before, and if we make the wrong steps, we can lose not only this opportunity, but also our cultural heritage that's in digital form," says Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.
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Kahle's Archive is working with the Library of Congress and private industry to preserve a record of the Internet for future generations, and has been saving parts of the Web for five years. Kahle says he knows of "no good [archived Internet] collection pre-1996" and he feels that's a shame. But, he adds, it is not unprecedented in history.
"The early version of whatever media is usually lost," he says. "Early films were recycled for their silver content. Any books from the first 50 years of printing demand a very high price, because they rarely exist. And the library of Alexandria [an attempt to archive collected knowledge of the ancient world] is best known for being burned by three successive governments — first the Romans, then the Christians, then the Muslims."
Still, archivists don't want to fall behind this time, if they can help it.
In December, Congress appropriated $100 million to the Library of Congress to develop a national program to preserve digital information. The effort is about more than just money, say archiving professionals.
"The first stage of the plan is to make sure we understand the issues related to long-term preservation," says Laura Campbell of the Library of Congress' Digital Infrastructure Program. "What are the considerations to making sure this content isn't lost to future generations?"
