Kelly Stewart is Chief Archivist at Artefactual Systems Inc.
When I reflect on the features that define the digital preservation community, I see two notable characteristics. One is slow and cautious, the other fast and free. While these two aspects may seem to be diametrically opposed, both are nonetheless necessary in the digital preservation community so that our children and grandchildren (and so on) have the best chance of living in a world where cultural memory thrives.
At Artefactual we often turn to the work of Stewart Brand and the Long Now Foundation for inspiration. Stewart Brand approaches civilisation and how it operates as layers: fashion is the top layer and is always in motion, nature is the bottom layer and changes very slowly. In between are layers of commerce, governance, and infrastructure. This pace layered approach helps us at Artefactual keep focused on how we approach digital preservation (fashion = software, nature = AIP or digital content).
I think that pace layers can also apply to the digital preservation community and the work we are trying to achieve. As Brand states: “The fast parts learn, propose, and absorb shocks; the slow parts remember, integrate, and constrain. The fast parts get all the attention. The slow parts have all the power.”
“The slow parts remember, integrate, and constrain”
On the one hand there’s the mission: to preserve digital content for ‘as long as necessary’ (according to the DPC definition). This time frame can be relatively short: a few years to meet regulatory requirements, or, it can be inconceivably long: hundreds of years or indeed forever. This mandate to protect is fundamentally conservative. Any change requires careful and methodical examination from all angles before it is integrated. Preservation ‘as long as necessary’ requires long term thinking and consideration of long term responsibility - this requires bravery and patience!
“The fast parts learn, propose, and absorb shocks”
On the other hand I also see a deep desire by folks in the digital preservation community to learn more, to do better, to improve the chances that the digital content under our care will remain renderable into the future. Technology is rapidly evolving and the volume of data is increasing exponentially. There are new and wonderful opportunities to potentially make preservation work manageable and content usable. Constantly learning, inhaling newness and exhaling new ways of working requires vulnerability and a growth mindset.
“The fast parts get all the attention. The slow parts have all the power.”
The thing is, we need to be both fast and slow, cautious and free, brave and vulnerable, in order to evolve how we work, the systems we create and maintain, and how we protect the digital content under our care. If we don’t want to learn or we can’t integrate, we stagnate. However, I’ve been working in and around the archives and digital preservation domain for more than 30 years and all around me I see smart, interested, curious people who are commited to the mission of ensuring that today’s stories are accessible and understandable in the future.
I think of the digital preservation community as a set of concentric circles and I want to tip my hat to all of them (you). In the centre with me are my Artefactual coworkers with whom I spend many hours considering how to integrate what we’ve learned into our software. I love to see conversations in our Github repositories between our Contributor Success folks and the development community. I love to see folks ask questions in our user forums and watch how that question is answered by a fellow community member. And I also tip my hat to the wider digi pres community, with whom I gather sporadically but from whom I am constantly learning and integrating. Here’s to another World Digital Preservation Day and collectively walking a few steps further down the path toward a world where cultural memory thrives.