A Moral and Legal Obligation: Preservation in the Digital Age - 0 views
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Mark Ness on 29 Nov 15Marcum (1997) uses a quote from Jarislav Pelikan to establish the need for archival commitment to preserve information (knowledge) in establishments such as libraries, museums, archives (federal, state and local municipalities) and the like as illustrating "embalming of the dead". To this end, a task force was formed by combining the Commission on Preservation and Access and the Research Libraries Group formed a Task Force on the Archiving of Digital Information. This task force identified a short list of five challenges associated with the preservation of digital artifacts. Specifically, organizational in nature: − "The first line of defense against loss of valuable digital information rests with the creators, providers, and owners of digital information. − Long-term preservation of digital information on a scale adequate for the demands of future research and scholarship will require a deep infrastructure capable of supporting a distributed system of digital archives. − A sufficient number of trusted organizations must exist that are capable of storing, migrating, and providing access to digital collections. − A process of certification for digital archives is needed to create an overall climate of trust about the prospects of preserving digital information. − Certified digital archives must have the right and duty to exercise an aggressive rescue function as a fail-safe mechanism for preserving valuable digital information that is in jeopardy of destruction, neglect, or abandonment by its current custodian" (pp. 358-359). The task force also established a list of greatest organizational challenges opposing support for the preservation of digital information. This list includes the following items: − "Legal bases for deposit and rescue. In individual countries and internationally, legislation and agreements are needed to encourage legal deposit of electronic resources with archival repositories, to enable rescue of abandoned resource