Preservation
- taking care of the objects or items in the collection to deter their
deterioration. Migration - keeping
online collections updated so they can continue to be accessed even as the
technology changes. Those are two essential tasks in the care of collections.
To
preserve a collection you must manage the environmental factors that cause
deterioration. The first
requirement is a stable humidity and temperature. Dust and pollutants must be controlled and practices must
deter mechanical damage from handling.
Often preservation requires re-housing in archival materials. Sometimes depending on the composition
of the object, it requires migration to a different medium because the original
item is too unstable. Putting
newspapers on microfilm is a prime example. Microfilm will last years longer than newsprint. We’ve talked about most of this
before. When caring for objects
the archivist makes the decision whether the object can or should be preserved
or whether the information is what is important. If it is the thing itself, re-house and
store meeting the environmental controls needed for preservation. If it is the information than find an
alternative material. Microfilm
over newsprint. CDs over
videocassettes. Digitization over
audiotapes.
If
digitization is the choice or if the collection was born digital than the task
of migration becomes paramount.
For documents the standard is to save the file as a pdf. For a photograph, save as a TIFF. Metadata, that is information about the
digitized object are most important.
Metadata provide the information necessary for migration to occur when
the technology changes. Don’t
count on anything lasting more than five years in its current digital state.
Some upgrades are required even more often. Archivists are still grappling with the preservation of
digital material. It will be an
ongoing battle with I fear loss of an enormous amount of information. I wonder how many of our favorite
photographs saved digitally will actually be accessible in 50 years. Not just archivists should be aware of
this issue and work to keep their files updated.
