We’ve already spent some time this semester discussing the challenges of digital preservation, but this week I’d like us to pay particular attention to the role of digital archives. Most archives accession only the most important documents and usually limit their content to particular fields. For instance, state archives focus on state government. The UMass special collections (which is also the University Archive) of course has many documents related to the history of UMass history, but also specializes in the history of social movements (with the papers of W.E.B. DuBois as the highlight).Yet, even with these areas of specialization, archives (when we look at the collection of physical documents) cannot collect everything and must constantly make decisions regarding what to keep and what to throw away (literally onto the dustbin of history…).
The advent of digital preservation, however, has allowed archives to be less “picky” and accession many more items than in the past. What we as historians are left with is a double-edged sword of sorts. On the one hand, we now (or our counterparts in the future) have much more information than we normally would have access to. On the other hand, however, we now have much more information than we normally would have access to… Yes, it is the rhetorical embarrassment of riches. How, can we sort through all of this information? Most historians owe a great deal to the work done by archivists in organizing and culling the documents so that when we enter the archives, we can focus our intention on the contents of the documents, rather than finding the relevant documents. Yet, we now might be able to find information more quickly (through digitization) and also vastly widen the scope of our research, since we now have access to so many other layers of information and society (i.e. not just the official record, but also the voices of secondary and tertiary sources.
Some national archives have set out on an amazingly ambitious archiving and digitization program. A great example here is the national archive of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) which has set out to digitize every known document pertaining to the Netherlands (every document!). The library’s “E-Depot” guarantees long-term storage of digital material and have been able to use this guarantee to attract most local and regional archives in the land to consolidate their information. The KB will accept any type of format – including websites, digitized originals, e-books, e-journals, and much more.
In 2008, the German parliament passed a digital preservation law regarding German websites. The law itself is rather bizarre to be honest – all websites much submit a copy of their website to the national library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. According to the FAQ at the library’s own homepage, website producers must submit full copies of their web content to the library at regular intervals. The content covers all aspects of the website – from text, to pictures, to audio and video files, as well as any multi-media elements (like flash-based plug-ins). Needless to say, this law has created quite a backlash in Germany. The library still has not been able to set up a way for website producers to easily submit their content nor has the library explored a way to collect such data on their own (as Google or the Internet Archive does). In the meantime, the library has reduced its digital accession to just online journals, e-books, and university publications (master’s and Ph.D theses). The same FAQ claims that the technical aspects of collecting websites is still in development and as such is not yet accessioning them (although by law, the website producers still need to keep copies for future donation to the library!).
Not to be only Euro-centric here in today’s post, I’ll also add a few words about two great examples of digital preservation here in the US. First, check out this article about the state archivist of Minnesota (where else, right?). Also, the state of Washington was the first state to create a separate digital archive (rather then expand the existing physical archive). I won’t go into detail here, but do check out those sites and let me know in class what you think.