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‘Why Do We Need to Keep This in Print? It's on the Web’: A Review of Electronic Archiving Issues and Problems

2002; K. G. Saur Verlag; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1515/mfir.2002.59

1865-8458

Dorothy A. Warner,

Research Data Management Practices

Indeed! It may be on the web today, but is there a plan in place to ensure that it will be there in twenty or more years? Probably not. In the haste to make information available electronically there are few agreed-upon plans for the preservation of digital information and much has already been lost. The particular concern of preserving electronic state government documents recently became an issue for our State Documents Interest Group of the Documents Association of New Jersey (DANJ) when we recognized not only that fewer documents are produced in print format but also that there is not a state plan to preserve the electronic documents being produced. For several years the Division of Elections in New Jersey eliminated the webpage that gave the previous year's election lists and results. Fortunately, the concern from those using the information prompted the Division of Elections to begin to retain this information. But the earlier information is gone. Recently, Public Utilities created a new webpage and eliminated virtually all of the documents that had existed on the earlier page. At least one agency replaces its old annual report with the new one. The predicament in New Jersey is not an isolated one. Our response was to research the issue of digital preservation and to present a report of recommendations to the State Librarian. The report, edited by Sue Lyons (2001, available at the DANJ website www.danj.org/DANJ), provides a thoughtful overview of the concerns and problems of digital archiving, offering recommendations for a cooperative process and plan by the state. In the report, Lyons cites several examples of lost digital information, including data from the Viking mission to Mars and all computerized data from a New York study mapping land use and environmental data throughout the state.