As Technology Evolves ... How Do We (Want to) Protect Memory

In my youth, I was a prolific letter writer detailing to family and friends the ins and outs of my studies and work. It was amazing to see the cache of letters my father had collected when I went through his papers in Copenhagen in 2002 - every letter from me since the late 60s up until about 1987 was there, constituting "how I presented to my family". What happened in1987?  Telephone rates from North America to Europe dropped.  When it became possible to go from anxious 3-minute calls to leisurely chats because the per-minute cost fell into a manageable range, there was no further reason to sit at the typewriter.  It never occurred to me to consider any kind of legacy or history aspect - I have told friends tongue in cheek how "historians will be at a loss" as to the details of my work after 1987 ... until the web search tools pick up a different trail about 2004 and on, of course.

Organizations dating from before the web may have a similar experience as they used aging media until the web era. If some evidence of current work in an enterprise is largely contained in, say, documents captured in repositories and featured on its intranet and public website, there are well known methods to keep them.  But what about preserving "how we presented to the public any day in 20XX and how all the underlying discussions fed that look?" The Way Back Machine may not be sufficient.

Questions for information professionals planning organizational vaults to protect memory include:  Beyond legal requirements, what do we want to remember - and what do we want the world to be able to discover about us in the past?  How can we feature the value of what we have kept?  How can we trace the evolution of our presence?  How can we ensure our legacy materials are there to support future research?  How could technology developments affect future access by researchers to our collection?

Let me know what you think!

Comments

[Patrick]

Hello,

I was just told about this blog so this is my visit and post.

I am dealing with these concerns in my business and in my teaching.

The first point I would make is one that is so often ignored, budget. For example, decades of medical records. OCR is all but useless for much of them because of the high error rates, never mind trying to OCR a Dr.'s handwriting. This means manual input, but this is incredibly expensive and often fails to produce a useful result. What if the person reading something doesn't understand the word or its context. What if the original information is incorrect? Even when it is entered, how do you retrieve it? I think XML is a wonderful solution for identifying data but it is not the whole solution.

Some may laugh but Microfilm is still the safest way to go. It sure is a lot cheaper and more reliable.

It's a tricky problem. I look forward to hearing some opinions.

Good luck with your Blog!

Patrick
PLC Instructor