Digitizing Archives

For my archives class, I recently wrote an essay on the challenges that archives face concerning electronic and digital records.
While the digitization of archival records is incredibly important, it also poses unique challenges to the archivists – due mainly to the fact that technology is rapidly evolving. The electronic tapes, floppy disks, and zip drives of yester-year are still largely in working condition, but the machines necessary to retrieve their information have long since failed.
When an archive undertakes a digitization project, they must be aware that their technologies will have to be updated on a regular basis. There is a saying in the archival world that digital records “last forever – or for five years, whichever comes first.”*

I thought of this paper, as I was reading this news article about digitizing First World War records.
An archivist named Gordon Jung at LAC acknowledges problems associated with digital records, but also discusses the immense amount of accessibility that these records allow. No longer does a user interested in WWI need to visit Ottawa and sift through boxes of records. For the most part many of these are available online, from the comfort of one’s home.

Now these records are widely accessible and are hopefully reaching a technological savvy generation, who likely do not have any direct connection to the war. The stories of soldiers are available and these digital copies are allowing their stories to survive indefinitely (should the records be constantly updated by LAC that is). As Jung explains, eventually the physical documents will become too fragile for actual use, and the digital copies will act as a stand in, allowing researchers to better know and understand that tumultuous time.

*Colin Webb, "The Malleability of Fire: Preserving Digital Information," in Managing Preservation for Libraries and Archives, ed. John Feather (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004), 31.