The Digital Blog

So - what are major concerns of libraries, archives or collections, when thinking of going digital. First of all:

• money.

Second to ultimate:

• Mobile devices
• Information filtering
• Digital preservation and archive
• Interoperability issues
• Content and knowledge management
• Information retrieval
• Grid architectures
• Information seeking and use
• Intellectual property
• Data and information mining
• Collection development and management
• User communities
• Interface and interaction design
• Security and privacy
• Multimedia digital libraries
• Multi-language support
• Digital libraries in education
• Document genres and categorization
• Social media / Web 2.0
• Metadata and cataloguing
• Sustainability
• Open Source tools and systems

The second list looks really insuperable. It is not.

Thanks to Jill Hurst-Wahl, digitzation101

I’ve written a fair number of blog posts of digital preservation and none talk about the preservation of digital materials without the use of technology. Our “bet” is that technology is here to stay. If past events can predict future performance, then our history tells us that our technology will continue to become more advanced. However, the use of materials on our planet is changing.

Will those of us who have been used to unlimited electricity, for example, continue to be able afford it? And will the electricity be there? How “preserved” are our digital assets if they cannot be used due to periods of darkness?

I am not predicting a digital dark age. Nor am I saying that we should not digitize because we have a fragile infrastructure. If we limited what we all did because we felt the future was uncertain, we’d never do anything. But I do hope that somewhere someone is working through scenarios and thinking about what we’ll need in order to bring our digital assets back to life should a period of darkness occur. (Will they require some special care?)
 Yes, a deep thought on the day after Earth Day. A day on which I drove too much, because taking public transportation was not an option. A day where I saw gas prices over $3.70/gallon. A day where I participated on a panel about technology (blogging), while the sun was setting over the lake, reminding us that technology isn’t everything.