Well, Christmas has come early for me. I’ve been quoted in the November 13 edition of the Future of the Book. Nothing says geek-chic like a nod from Future of the Book, in my opinion. FofB is the brainchild of Gary Frost, and is one of the great blogs from the time before blogs were so called. Gary is one of the big thinkers and great practitioners in conservation and preservation.
Here’s the quotation, slightly amended for clarity, but do yourself a favor, and read more at http://futureofthebook.com.
Preservation is one of the library and archive community’s big goals, and digital preservation in particular is relatively well supported at present. Still, we should always remember that the technical aspects of preservation that we talk about on these lists are merely synonymous with preservation as it appears in our institutional mission statements.
The high-level, “intrinsically good” preservation function of libraries consists in having collections under institutional ownership, describing and disclosing their existence, and providing the place or means to use them. It’s important for those of us in the preservation trenches to keep in mind that the library basically gets up and goes each day – links resolve, PDFs are downloaded, images are viewed, databases are queried, books are checked out, articles are read – without any direct effort on the part of the preservation department.
A lot of preservation work (in digital preservation especially) is speculative, asking questions about how long the present state of affairs will continue, what will be necessary for that continuation, and how changes can be made gracefully. As a result, I would suggest that the only realistic conversation to have about preservation management is how to manage risk in a situation where preservation will always be a primary institutional goal, but a secondary operational priority. If you find that paradoxical, I agree, but I think it has the advantage of being an accurate assessment.