US: Libraries taking the (really) long view

As libraries shift more of their resources to holdings that either originate as digital or become digital through scanning, it has become clear that just because something lives in the virtual stacks does not mean it will be around forever, writes Andy Guess in Inside Higher Ed. Anyone who has ever suffered through a hard drive crash (or tried futilely to save a scratched DVD) has faced the inherent physical limitations of digital storage. Now librarians are doing the same as they determine how digital holdings fit into their central mission: preserving works so that they can be accessed not just today, not just tomorrow, but indefinitely.

So, in a literal race against time - but one with a perpetually receding deadline - libraries from research universities and other institutions around the world are collaborating to tackle a whole host of problems that so far have no satisfactory solution. They include hardware complexities, such as constructing storage devices that continuously monitor and repair data while remaining easily scalable; redundancy measures, such as distributing and duplicating data across storage devices and even across the country; universal standards, such as formats that could conceivably remain readable in the distant future; and interfaces, such as open software protocols that manage digital holdings and make them accessible to the public.

Some of the solutions are still in development, while others are piecemeal. Various institutions are trying different approaches, and corporations are competing with each other as others collaborate on open-source approaches.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site