Fear and Loathing in the Digital Ice Age

And before you ask, digital ice age does not refer to my lack of posting (Peggy, I promise I’ve not forgotten you). The title refers to two interesting pieces that I enjoyed reading today and wanted to mention. The first is a post by a “Dangerous” LIS student who wants to be an archivist.  She’s asking some of the questions that should keep us up at night, especially if we believe Ham was correct about selecting materials that document human experience.

The second is a piece from Popular Mechanics on the instability of digital information (HT: Russ).  I really enjoyed this article. It basically repeats some of the same things I have read and heard archivists say about digital preservation, except for the final line:

And remember, a printed copy is sometimes the best form of backup.

It’s funny. I often think that too. Almost every digital preservation work I have read and workshop I have attended says this is not the case. After all, archivists rightly contend that metadata is important to ensure the authenticity of documents. And authenticity is extremely important. Still, I often think that it’s better to have a printed, stable copy of a work with little or no metadata, than it is to have no document at all.