Then there is cataloging and metadata
If we do not keep up with the ever-changing expectations of digital learners, then our books will not be found. This is ongoing and expensive.
Our paper books have lasted hundreds of years on our specific datasets shelves and are still readable. Without active maintenance, we will be lucky if our digital books last a decade.
Also, how we use books and periodicals, in the decades after they are published, change from how they were originally intended. We are seeing researchers use books and periodicals in machine learning investigations to find trends that were never easy in a one-by-one world, or in the silos of the publisher databases. is time consuming and now threatened by publisher’s lawsuits.
If we want future access to our digital
heritage we need to make some structural changes: changes to institution and publisher behaviors as well as supportive funding, laws, and enforcement.
The first step is to recognize preservation and access to our digital heritage is a big job and one worth doing. Then, find ways that institutions– educational, government, non-profit, and philanthropic– could make preservation a part of our daily responsibility.