Digital files exist simply as data until they are rendered by application software, operating systems, and hardware platforms—making them vulnerable to format obsolescence and media decay. Unlike physical materials, digital files cannot survive what we call “benign neglect”.
As a consultant, I work with collections of paper files that have been stored untouched for decades but are still readable and in good condition. The same is not true with digital data. Ensuring their longevity is complicated and costly because they need routine preservation to survive. While analog records are still viewable if damaged, electronic records are unusable if corrupted.
The Challenge of the Digital Realm
Digital preservation typically centers on the choice of interim storage media, the life expectancy of a digital system, and the expectation to migrate the digital files to future systems while maintaining the functionality and the integrity of the original system.
Archivists need to ensure that digital files are still readable in their original format, which can be a Herculean task. Other challenges include “bit rot,” or the decay of information within a digital file; hardware, software, and format obsolescence; and server crashes and other disasters. The growth of digital content has created critical preservation problems that cannot be resolved with traditional archival methods. As archivists, we are at the very beginning of figuring out best practices to preserve our digital heritage. As a society, we are moving into an era where much of what we know today, much of what is coded and written electronically, may be lost forever without proactive preservation.
Refresh, Migrate, or Emulate
Three fundamental preservation strategies are refreshment, migration, and emulation. These approaches are designed to preserve the integrity of digital objects and to retain the ability for users to retrieve, display, and use them in the face of continually changing technology.
Refreshing involves periodically moving a file from one physical storage medium to another to avoid the obsolescence or degradation of the storage medium. Because physical storage devices decay, and because technological changes make older storage devices inaccessible to new computers, an ongoing form of refreshing is likely to be necessary for years to come. For instance, I advise my clients to keep electronic backups of their files on their computers, a hard drive, and the cloud. The hard drive should occasionally be checked to see if it is still functional. When the drive becomes several years old, the data it holds should be refreshed by moving it to a new hard drive.
Migration periodically converts data from one hardware or software configuration to another, or from one generation of computer technology to a subsequent generation, preserving the essential characteristics of the data. Migration will gradually bring files into a narrower variety of standard file formats. In my experience, each migration of data helps develop more robust standards, clearer workflows, and better practices. While migration can be a painful process, it does not have to be if it is well-planned.
Emulation is similar to migration, but focuses on the application software, rather than the files containing the data. Emulation combines software and hardware to reproduce the essential characteristics of one computer to another, allowing programs designed for a particular environment to operate in a different one. Emulation requires the creation of emulators, programs that translate code and instructions between systems. Under emulation, older data will run on contemporary computers.
Emulation can run the gamut from academic to entertainment. At Emory University, researchers can use an emulator to search Salman Rushdie’s old Macintosh to understand how he organized his writing and research files. On the opposite end of the spectrum, gaming enthusiasts can create emulators of classic arcade games. For example, my husband and nephews built a system to play Pac Man and Donkey Kong using code on a Raspberry Pi.
Surviving the Digital Dark Age
A significant gap in digital records created in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries already exists, and the long-term preservation of digital objects is a challenge facing not only the information sector, but also society as a whole. Led by archivists and other information professionals, institutions are developing initiatives aimed at preserving digital media. One hopes that by working together, we will survive the digital dark age.
The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.
Archives often operate in environments defined by scarcity of space, staff, time, and funding. In these conditions, every decision carries weight. Without a plan, archives risk spreading their resources too thin, responding only to immediate crises, and missing opportunities for growth and impact. Strategic planning serves as a lifeline, providing archivists with a structured approach to prioritize, allocate resources, and communicate the value of their work to stakeholders.
Archivists have long recognized patterns of limited funding that shape their institutions, yet they have consistently responded with creativity, commitment, and innovation. Even when resources are scarce, archives continue to find ways to build and maintain essential infrastructure and strengthen public engagement. Each challenge underscores the importance of archivists’ labor and provides an opportunity to advocate for the central role archives play in their communities.
Archives safeguard treasures, including objects like the founding documents of a nation and photographs of defining cultural moments. These holdings inspire a sense of connection to the past, and at the heart of that work are archivists whose expertise brings these collections to life.
No archives is an island. Especially in resource-constrained environments, collaboration through shared infrastructure provides a lifeline. Consortia models turn scarcity into opportunity by spreading costs and expertise across multiple archives. By pooling resources, institutions achieve more than they could alone.
Well-resourced institutions have developed archival best practices, including comprehensive finding aids, climate-controlled storage, and digital preservation systems. For small or resource-constrained archives, these standards can feel out of reach. The danger is that the profession’s ideals may discourage institutions from taking action, leaving records vulnerable. The solution lies in paring down practices and procedures without abandoning principles.
Many archives exist within environments of chronic underfunding. Community archives, small historical societies, or lone arrangers may work with little more than donated materials, a handful of volunteers, and minimal budgets.
However, these institutions remain vital, safeguarding the histories of communities often absent from mainstream narratives. Scarcity shapes their reality, yet it can still allow meaningful work.
Humanity produces more digital content than at any other point in history. Every click, message, and post contributes to an expanding universe of data that represents the cultural memory of our time. At the center of this transformation stand archivists, the professionals uniquely trained to ensure that memories survive in the future. However, even as the scale of the challenge grows, their voices risk being sidelined in public conversations about digital preservation.
In recent years, the concept of “slow librarianship” has emerged as a thoughtful response to the accelerating pace and pressures placed upon library professionals. Drawing inspiration from the broader slow movement, it emphasizes care, reflection, ethics, and people-centered work over speed and efficiency.
The archival profession is characterized by dedication to public memory, cultural preservation, and service. However, beneath this noble mission lies a troubling reality: the increasing reliance on gig and contract labor.
Written documents have long occupied a privileged position in archives as the most authoritative memory source. However, this excludes vast repositories of knowledge that reside outside the written word, especially within Indigenous communities, where memory is often preserved and transmitted through oral traditions, performance, storytelling, ceremony, and embodied practices.
Archival description is often treated as a neutral or technical task: summarizing contents, assigning subject headings, and organizing metadata for retrieval. However, description is actually far from neutral. It shapes how users interpret records, which narratives are centered, and whose voices are made visible or erased.
As the archival profession reckons with the legacies of colonialism, more institutions and practitioners are turning toward Indigenous and decolonial approaches that reframe traditional archival practice. Central to this shift is recognizing cultural protocols and community-defined rules governing how knowledge is created, shared, accessed, and preserved. Cultural protocols are foundational to ethical, respectful, and reciprocal relationships between archives and Indigenous communities.
In recent decades, Indigenous communities and archivists have challenged the dominant frameworks that have long shaped archival practice. Traditionally, Western archival models have prioritized state authority, institutional control, and the presumption of neutrality. These models often fail to reflect Indigenous worldviews, community needs, or the rights of Indigenous peoples over their records and heritage.
As archival practice shifts to meet the challenges of the digital age, the ethical use of born-digital materials has become one of the most pressing concerns for archivists. These materials—emails, websites, text messages, digital photographs, spreadsheets, social media posts, and more—are created and stored digitally from their inception.
The fundamental principles of archival preservation focus on the agents of deterioration, preventive conservation, and essential preservation strategies applied in archival settings.
The monetary appraisal of archives and manuscripts is a critical yet underexplored intersection of library science and financial valuation. This article addresses the persistent knowledge gap between archival assessment and fiscal valuation and provides an overview of the monetary appraisal process in the United States. It focuses on concluding the fair market value (FMV) of noncash charitable contributions, a process governed by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations and the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP). By documenting practices and terminology, the article serves as a resource for archivists navigating the complexities of donor relations and institutional stewardship. It advocates for increased fiscal literacy within the archival profession, suggesting that an integrated understanding of market dynamics and stewardship costs is essential for the care and financial substantiation of collections.
Proper archival storage is one of the most critical aspects of archival preservation. In addition to housing collections in a dedicated archival storage room, using suitable storage materials and enclosures helps protect archival collections from environmental damage, physical wear, and chemical deterioration.
One of the core challenges archivists face is determining the appropriate description level for materials in their collections. From broad collection-level overviews to granular item-level details, descriptive hierarchies play a crucial role in conveying the context and structure of archival materials.
Description is a cornerstone of archival practice, providing the means for users and archivists to understand, access, and interpret materials.
Mixed-media archives, which contain physical and digital records, present unique challenges for archival arrangement. These collections require archivists to develop strategies that address the different needs of physical and digital materials while maintaining the collection’s coherence and accessibility.
Digital records have introduced new challenges to traditional archival arrangement practices. While the principles of original order and provenance remain relevant, the nature of digital materials requires archivists to adapt these principles to new formats and technologies.
Archival arrangement organizes and structures archival materials to ensure efficient management, access, and preservation.
Redaction in archival work—obscuring or removing sensitive information from records—has become a central concern in contemporary archival ethics. As archives increasingly acquire born-digital records and digitize historical collections for online access, archivists must grapple with data privacy, access, transparency, and potential harm.
Archives have traditionally focused on preserving historical records, ensuring access, and maintaining the integrity of collections. However, in the digital age, the moral responsibilities of archivists have grown more complex.
Archives have long been viewed as bastions of memory, preservation, and historical accountability. However, archivists must confront ethical questions in an era of digital surveillance, data harvesting, and global information flows.
As archival institutions evolve from custodians of information to facilitators of memory and meaning-making, emotional engagement has become a vital, though often overlooked, dimension of archival design.
Archival reading rooms have long been the centerpiece of public access to collections. They are where researchers engage with historical documents, where discovery becomes tangible, and where the institutional identity of an archives is most visibly embodied.
Archival discovery tools, such as catalogs, finding aids, search interfaces, and digital repositories, are often the first point of contact between users and collections. These tools serve as maps and compasses, guiding users through vast and often complex holdings.
Design thinking has become a widely adopted approach in fields ranging from technology to education, prized for emphasizing empathy, experimentation, and iterative problem-solving. For archives, traditionally shaped around internal workflows and professional conventions, design thinking presents an opportunity to reimagine outreach and engagement strategies from users’ perspectives.
With shrinking resources and increasing demands, archivists cannot afford to view budgeting as an afterthought. A carefully developed budget is a strategic tool that connects an archives’ mission to its daily operations. It demonstrates accountability, supports advocacy efforts, and provides a framework for decision-making.