Archival Duties - Preservation and Migration

            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.