Electronic Information and Digitization: Preservation and Security Challenges

This chapter considers obstacles and solutions ahead for administrators who seek to preserve intellectual property in digital form, with an emphasis on museums and libraries. Although museum and library professionals have always assumed that preservation of the evidence of the past is our primary responsibility, that assumption is being mightily tested by the advent of digital media. The three main obstacles such administrators confront are: our instinctive devotion to preserving all artworks and intellectual property at any cost, the instability of a digital platform, and the fluid and seemingly infinite permutations of any digital experience. This chapter reviews some of the implications for stewards of cultural resources of this new borderless language of human expression.