There’s a popular argument to think twice before you share on social media, because what is shared cannot be taken back.  Once online, it is online forever. While that is more of a precaution than a hard and fast rule, it is often something we believe.

But if you’ve ever read something and then tried to find it again a decade later, you know first-hand how content that is born digital can become unavailable.

The nature of born-digital content is as the name suggests—content built and published (or “born”) for a digital medium and meant to stay digital. Without conscious preservation efforts, born-digital content isn’t archived anywhere physically and can easily disappear.

Efforts by preservation organizations help mitigate the trickle or flood of material disappearing from the web, but they cannot capture everything.

What does it mean when born-digital content can simply disappear without much of a trace?

1. Documenting Disappearances

In August of this year, a disturbing trend was revealed.

Over the course of the last ten years, a team of researchers had noticed that previously-available open access journals were disappearing from the web. In order to understand and document the full extent of this vanishing knowledge, they built methodology, compared databases, and tallied up the losses.

Information scientists Mikael Laakso, Lisa Matthias, and Najko Jahn identified a total of 176 journals that had disappeared between the years 2000-2019. These journals had been published all over the world and covered a variety of disciplines, meaning the problem was widespread and indiscriminate.

There are safeguards that act as a network of duplicate copies and preservation efforts for journals, but Thib Guicherd-Callin, acting manager of one such program, told Nature that digital preservation initiatives are “woefully underfunded.”

It is important to remember that this study wasn’t focused on how many journals had been successfully preserved and remained accessible thanks to programs such as LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), and PKP PN (Portico and the Public Knowledge Project’s Preservation Network). The Global LOCKSS Network preserves 11,000 journal titles! LOCKSS makes “use of the copies it manages, by enlisting them to validate integrity against each other, rather than relying uncritically on comparisons against a centralized fixity store,” keeping digital objects safe, accessible, and verifiable.

Matthias believes a true solution would need to be shared between publishers, authors, librarians, and preservation services, but that solution just doesn’t exist yet.

2. Digital Excavations of the Future

Modern-day historians have a wealth of physical objects and documents (often preserved digitally) that they mine for details about events, track daily life, understand a variety of perspectives, and ultimately draw conclusions about the past. The tumultuous year of 2020 has provided an interesting thought experiment around a practical question: In one thousand years, what material from this year, created almost entirely online, will be available for study? And more to our point, what material will vanish completely?

The first question of what will be worth preserving at all is a difficult one. The answer typically only becomes clear in hindsight, but in the fast-moving world of the internet, decisions are needed now. University Affairs tracks collection projects by the University of Saskatchewan and Brock University Library, noting success in user submission and a hyper-local, person-focused scope.

Many countries, such as United Kingdom, France, and Denmark mandate their national libraries to capture a comprehensive digital record of life in that country at any given time. This may prove a future advantage to historians studying these countries’ culture in the time of COVID-19.

The United States has a more randomized approach. The Library of Congress has digital archives covering the first 12 years of Twitter, but now it acquires tweets on a selective basis “similar to [their] collections of websites.” The LOC’s Web Archive team of subject experts select sites in accordance with the Library’s (incredibly broad) policy guidance. There are also the efforts of the (non-profit) Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine project to snapshot the web.

But without a legal mandate to preserve a comprehensive digital picture of the world, gaps and perspectives are bound to be missed. When only one voice is remembered, history isn’t complete.

Within the field of digitization, there is often a feeling that what’s done is done forever. But in reality, website collections need to be managed and interfaces kept functional as internet standards and usage practices change. A collection easily accessed on a desktop, for example, may be impossible to navigate on a smart phone. Scans and images saved on floppy discs are now difficult to access from modern computers, and other save formats are nearly obsolete.

Anderson Archival tracks the standards and trends of digitization, ensuring that files are saved in a variety of formats that have been identified by experts as having the most digital longevity. These formats include archival PDFs (PDF-A) and are often saved on cloud servers along with physical backups. We, too, believe in the notion that lots of copies keep stuff safe.

Whether you want your collection to be accessible forever online, or want to pick and choose who is granted copies and access, Anderson Archival is the solution to your digitization needs. Don’t let your digitization decisions come back to haunt you! To start the discussion and keep your collection available for the future, contact us today.

To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment giving women the right to vote, libraries and museums are showcasing the historical artifacts of the century-long movement. Looking at these collections, it’s easy to see how the stories we learned in school can leave out some of the most interesting bits of history. That is why historical collections, no matter how niche, are important to filling the gaps that history books leave out. In this way, a digital collection becomes more than a collection of papers or photographs; it becomes a narrative of history.

Library of Congress’s Suffragette Exhibit

In a year affected by COVID-19, online access to historical collections is more important than ever. Exhibitions that would usually be offered in person have moved partially or completely online to continue educating and inspiring those who can’t visit. The Library of Congress is one of the organizations turning to the internet to celebrate the women’s suffrage movement. In addition to in-person exhibitions, they’ve created an online exhibit for people to explore.

The “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote” online exhibit does more than simply display digital versions of the items in their collection. The Library of Congress organized the exhibition to tell a story. Rather than just present the artifacts, it narrates the different eras of the suffrage movement. Visitors can explore the early, post-Civil War women’s movement; see the picket lines in front of the White House; and learn about the brave women of color who are rarely included in history books. Though often condensed, the women’s suffrage exhibit tells a larger story of a movement that survived and changed over decades.

Beyond the main exhibition, the Library also links out into more focused collections, such as Photographs from the Record of the National Woman’s Party and Women’s Suffrage in Sheet Music, to expand on their narrative. These collections are unique, and on their own don’t tell a story. But when combined with the main exhibition’s narrative, these smaller collections add humanity to the historical figures showcased. These were impressive and creative women who lived and fought for their rights.

Telling a Story with Your Collection

One of the most important parts of a collection is the story behind it. It could be the story of gathering the materials or the story behind the artifacts, but the larger narrative is what the audience connects with. Researchers or avid enthusiasts may be able to appreciate a collection with little more than the artifacts themselves, but if your goal is to share, inform, or educate people who are new to the subject or wanting to expand their knowledge, then building a narrative is essential.

Having a strong narrative to your collection not only leads the visitor to the most important or interesting artifacts, but it puts the collection into historical context. Even journals or detailed records need context in order to enrich the history they represent. Without context, the women of color highlighted by the Library of Congress’s More to the Movement section of their women’s suffrage exhibit are just pictures and names. It’s the context of their place in the story that explains how important the women were to the suffragette movement and why they were overlooked by history.

How Digitization Can Improve Your Collection’s Storytelling

An online collection has advantages over a physical collection, one being an improved opportunity for storytelling. When a person visits an exhibit in person, they can only see what is displayed at that time. In many cases this is only one part of a larger collection. Space, condition, and security can keep amazing artifacts from in-person viewing. People must also move through a gallery and could miss items meant to be experienced together.

By digitizing, the entire collection is at the visitor’s fingertips. No need to hide away the most interesting pieces in order to protect them from deterioration. Millions of people can see these rarely shown items whenever they want, and the inclusion of these artifacts will enhance the integrity of the larger story.

Instead of wandering a physical gallery, possibly missing items due to crowds or time limitations, an online collection has the advantage of linking items together. As visitors follow these artifacts through the story behind them, they can choose to leave the path and go down a side story through direct links to other artifacts or web pages. Once done, they can easily return to the main narrative without missing anything. Since a digitized collection is available 24/7 online, visitors can come and go when it’s convenient for them.

People don’t always remember names or dates of historical events, but a well-told story that brings those events to life is easy to recall. Artifacts and documents enhance that story. They give proof of what happened and voice to people long past. Your collection has a unique story to tell, if you let it.

Do you have pieces of history that you’d like to see displayed as a narrative that could impact the world? Anderson Archival can help. Give us a call at 314-259-1900 or an email at info@andersonarchival.com today!