Friday, August 21, 2015

Media, metadata, access and preservation

Day of Digital Archives: McLuhan “The [digital] medium is [no longer] the [only] message.” New York Digital Archivists Working Group. 2011/10/06.
     Some quotes from a blog on media, metadata, access, and preservation.
  • With threats of technological obsolescence, vendor lock-in, hardware failure, bit rot and link rot, non-backwards compatible software, and format and media obsolescence, digital archivists need a system to accurately describe digital objects and assets in their form and function, content, subject, object and context.
  • If we miss key details, we run the risk of restricting access in the future because, for example, data may not be migrated or media refreshed as needed.
  • By studying and understanding media, digital archivists can propose a realistic and trustworthy digital strategy and implement better and best practices to guarantee more efficiency from capture (and digitization or ingest) and appraisal (selection and description), to preservation (storage) and access (distribution).
  • many libraries, archives and museums encourage simplified descriptions to catalog digital objects, but these generic descriptions (e.g. moving image, video or digital video) do not provide the most critical information to ensure future users can watch the video
  • With better description and critical appraisal at ingest, digital archivists will understand that the medium, the message and the content, subject, structure, form, format and other aspects are all integral parts. At that point we will start to change the commonly-held mindset that “The [digital] medium is [no longer] the [only] message.”
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