What Can We Afford to Lose?

As the intellectual and creative output of humankind grows exponentially, the burden of ensuring long-term access to information and cultural artifacts increases. Traditional means of conservation and preservation will continue to play a vital role in preserving artifactual collections, even as funding for these activities erodes. The strategies for digital preservation are not as well articulated: we are decising technical solutions to longevity, but the ultimate solutions will demand a type and degree of cooperation among libraries, museum, and archives that is unprecedented. This paper addresses the difficult choices that institutions and individuals face when taking action to preserve. It proposes a model for assessing what the values of collections is to the institution and its constituents, how that value changes over time, and how new technologies for creating, disseminating, and preserve information and cultural objects are changing our sense of the intrinsic value of library collections. Finally, the paper examines the critical issue of how we can measure our return on investment in preservation.