Competency F: Asset Preservation

“Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick, erase it
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it, quick, rewrite it
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it, drag it, drop it, zip, unzip it,”

Daft Punk, Technologic

Introduction
Whether physical or digital, information assets require extensive preservation, and while the needs of these two entities are different and face unique challenges, they also share similarities. Digital assets, for example, are prone to data corruption, backup failure, and other issues that create tension within the digital realm. Despite the known risks, physical copies are frequently phased out for other perceived benefits, such as ease of sharing. Meanwhile, physical artifacts have the downsides of weather, natural disasters, political fallout, and expensive preservation techniques working against them (Corrado, 2024).
While computer hardware faces similar perils to physical objects, the tendency for items to be permanently lost through software failure is a markedly more common threat. Provided that physical items are well-kept, and stored in a climate-controlled environment, they can last for decades or centuries. By contrast, the best-kept digital artifacts only last approximately 50 years without extensive maintenance and debugging (Gulotta et al., 2013).

Is Digital Information Truly Secure Compared to Physical Assets?
In the case of physical music libraries, music, ephemera, and physical objects, such as musical instruments are prone to having expensive and tedious storage needs that frequently surpass the budget forecasts and lead music librarians, for example, to have to make difficult decisions about which items to keep, to purchase, to store, and to prioritize (Cuervo, 2011). Audiovisual and film materials in particular suffer from needing to be handled with extreme care (Library of Congress, n.d.).

In the alternative case of digital preservation, rapid changes in technology, device compatibility, file format, hardware mismatch, and data corruption all contribute to the tenuous nature of digital asset management. Human error, budget cuts, and lack of staffing or resources can also contribute to this phenomenon. Much debate and discussion exists regarding whether digital information, due to its tenuous nature, should be freely shared and open source, or remain in its current state of academic paywalls, digital subscription services, and lack of digital or physical backup, leaving the only remaining records available on the cloud. For this reason, many librarians and information science professionals are turning to “dark archives,” an alternative backup of artifacts that do not follow traditional copyright laws. (Jailant, 2022).

Commoditizing and Archiving Digital Information
Google, Amazon, and other such corporate entities rely on profit and payment plans to “own” digital copies of books and other assets, which may be lost to the ages when these systems inevitably crash. These digital libraries risk deletion, excessive weeding, and loss of critical information, particularly when no longer deemed profitable. “We suggest that with respect to this broader notion of place both physical and digital libraries are instantiations in different media of the same base type: the library. In either case, both physical and digital libraries occupy the physical-conceptual continuum with respect to ideas, materials, and people. The distinction between physical and digital libraries is thus not always a clear one,” state Pomerantz and Marchionini (2006, p. 506).

Obsolete Upon Arrival
Emerging technologies make archiving and cataloging the digital realm even more difficult. Social media can be insurmountably tricky to wrangle as information accumulates moment upon moment (Hahn 2018). The open-source concept, Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS), was implemented in 1998 to combat deterioration and obsoletion when digitizing a document or artifact. In time, a community was also formed known as CLOCKSS to organize and gather those who might produce and maintain these so-called “safety copies” (CLOCKSS, n.d.). Still, despite the best efforts of archivists and catalogers everywhere, cherished items will inevitably become lost.

Conclusion
While preservation can be daunting for library professionals, it is rewarding work worth exploring and doing. Budgeting, curating, and prioritizing items for display and restoration can be tedious and repetitive, but we library professionals persist for information lovers everywhere, including ourselves.

Artifacts and Evidence
Artifact 1
Assignment:

Course: INFO 220 Music Librarianship and Informatics
Description:
In this assignment, we were asked to select three digital music libraries and review their ease of use. I selected three contrasting digital archives: DIAMM (the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music), the University of Wisconsin-Madison: Mills Library Digital Music Collection, and the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP): Petrucci Music Library. Due to the nature of the DIAMM, and the age of the artifacts in question, I found this collection difficult to navigate. Many of the items listed would still require an in-person visit. The Mills Library Digital Music Collection proved the easiest to navigate and the most fun to browse. It’s unclear if this was due to a positive user experience, the nature of the historical period in which they were created, or some combination of both. For the IMSLP, I was reminded of simple but complex systems like Wikipedia. Ultimately, all three systems had their pros and cons. This assignment is particularly relevant to digital music preservation because music databases and vocabularies are highly variable in terminology and vocabulary usage, which can cause many complications.

Artifact 2
Assignment:

Musical Score Representation and Retrieval in Digital Environments:
A Critical Review
Course: INFO 287 Digital Librarianship
Description:
This assignment involves a critical review of a peer-reviewed article– in this case, the Tolare et al., (2024) article regarding musical score retrieval. I remarked that while it was important to point out the shortcomings of music score databases and archives little was suggested or done when writing the article to “fix” the problem or to propose solutions. Such seems to be the case with many digital archives and databases; they are often complained about and rarely fixed. Ironically Tolare et al., (2024) reference studies from my Music Librarianship and Informatics professor. This was an outcome I did not expect when searching for a topic for critical review. It was refreshing to connect two of my classes holistically. This assignment highlights the dangers of becoming complacent with inconsistencies in archival quality within a particular topic or subject environment (i.e. Music, Audiovisual, etc.). Organizing and preserving information is not a matter to be taken lightly.

Artifact 3
Assignment:

Course: INFO 220 Music Librarianship and Informatics
Description:
This theoretical plan highlights the need for CD and physical music asset preservation and explains how one might begin to back up and protect both physical and digital copies of treasured items. This artifact once again describes how inconsistent musical and audiovisual preservation is. Music Librarianship (and Digital Librarianship, for that matter) could benefit from a more robust and standardized preservation policy, and this assignment highlights that fact by discussing the inconsistent nature of metadata cataloging for these types of items and ephemera. This artifact also discusses the role of other members within a potential academic library team and their purpose in the physical and digital preservation game, such as Information Technology (IT), cataloging departments or sub-departments, and more. As preservation grows more sophisticated and information proliferates, innovative ways to manage and store data will become increasingly necessary, and plans of this type will inevitably grow and change into more complex entities. The plan also highlights the digital “problem” of inconsistent file format and obsolescence, creating the need for LOCKSS and CLOCKSS.

References

CLOCKSS. (n.d.). CLOCKSS: Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. Retrieved [November 1, 2024], from https://clockss.org/

Corrado, E. M. (2024). Environmental sustainability and libraries. Technical Services Quarterly, 41(3), 265–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2024.2357015

Cuervo, A. P. (2011). Preserving the electroacoustic music legacy: A case study of the Sal-Mar Construction at the University of Illinois. Notes, 68(1), 32–47.

Gulotta, R., Odom, W., Forlizzi, J., & Faste, H. (2013). Digital artifacts as legacy: Exploring the lifespan and value of digital data. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1813–1822. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466240

Hahn, T. B. (2008). Mass digitization: Implications for preserving the scholarly record. Library Resources & Technical Services, 52(1), 18-26.

Jaillant, L. (2022). How can we make born-digital and digitised archives more accessible? Identifying obstacles and solutions. Archival Science, 22(3), 417–436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-022-09390-7

Library of Congress. (n.d.). Care, handling, and storage of audio visual materials. Retrieved [November 1, 2024], from https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/record.html

Pomerantz, J., & Marchionini, G. (2007). The digital library as place. Journal of Documentation, 63(4), 505–533. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410710758995