As a footnote, a number of organizations of the library/archive type are beginning to take this seriously, but they’re really 20 years too late, so while the effort is appreciated, it’s on the level of looking at a decimated ecosystem and going “now what was all that about?”.While I am not familiar enough with all the details to know how valid Scott's claim is, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that libraries have been late to take action to preserve the data on floppy disks and other digital media. Preservation seems to be relatively low on the priority list of most libraries, especially since fulfilling the preservation mandate would mean consuming resources (time, money, space) needed to fulfill higher priority responsibilities (i.e. service, access, etc).
Are libraries right to place a low priority on preservation? Are there other responsibilities that libraries and librarians are neglecting? I realize that it is always a case of making trade-offs and doing the best you can, but I worry that sometimes we are motivated to work on things that are new, exciting, publishable. (When was the last time someone published an article on correcting metadata records?) We place a higher priority on the needs of our communities today than the needs of our communities in the future. We are supposed to be institutions and professionals who take a long-term view on our work, but is seems that so much of our attention is focused on today.
I'd be interested in hearing from other librarians what you think of this issue, and what other areas that you think libraries are neglecting. While I'm writing this from the perspective of an academic librarian, I put the question to librarians of all sorts, as well as archivists who have also been painted by Scott with the same brush.
(I'm also interested in hearing from folks who feel that I'm totally off base with my comments on libraries neglecting preservation!)
Please feel free to post your thoughts as a comment below. Tks!
Two quick notes.
ReplyDeleteLibraries are not archives, so I don't like to have Libraries saddled with the responsibilities of archives. That said, some of them do have materials in floppy disk form and other magnetic form, and the fact is that unless they make an effort to transfer them to a more permanent or longer-lived format, then the items will be rapidly diminished in functionality, even for historical study (which traditionally libraries are here-and-there about).
And I'm really not angry at libraries! Who knew this would be a problem!
Although they aren't archives, libraries still have a responsibility to preserve their collections for future generations. Academic and special libraries more than public libraries, perhaps, but the expectation of preservation is still there. We've done a good job of this (in the aggregate) for printed materials, but I don't think we are anywhere near where we need to be in dealing with preserving electronic resources.
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping in to comment and clarify, and keep up the good work!
A timely post and question for us here at McMaster. I recently got an email from Nick Ruest asking if we could get our hands on some 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy drives. He's currently driving the digitization of our theses, and not surprisingly finding a number that have floppies shoved in the back. When I think about it, it's kind of silly to catalog such an item, throw it on a shelf, and not give another thought to the magnetic medium inside. We spend (or spent) so much time worrying about the preservation of books--even building labs in our buildings to do fancy restoration--but so little capturing the information on these included media. Ironically, it's generally rather easy to replace a book as we all know; somehow I doubt it's going to be the same with included media. With the theses, of course, it's really a shame, since what's on that disk may exist there and there only at this point.
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