Preserving digital materials: Confronting tomorrow's problems today

Abstract

There is investment on a very large scale in creating digital cultural material and, as the quantity grows, problems of preservation are becoming more apparent. Digital materials are different from physical materials, in particular because their content can only be delivered by computer processing. Their preservation is difficult and complex. Policies are needed on what to preserve for the long term. Solutions are required to practical and technical issues that include cataloguing digital materials, dealing with technical obsolescence and the physical deterioration of media, and to problems of authenticity. First‐step strategies are reviewed in this article. Overarching contextual factors discussed include vulnerability, political context, value and ownership. The large amount of work on digital preservation world‐wide is outlined. It is concluded that, although it is difficult to envisage digital materials surviving for millennia as physical objects and collections have done, the Internet itself may constitute a new context that will enable at least some of them to do so.