Preserving Our Digital Heritage

Gregory Colati, University of Connecticut

October 22, 2012

http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncan/5510161001/

The Dilemma of Modern Media, 1996 BEFORE YouTube, Facebook, and

Smartphones

Paul Conway, Preservation in the Digital World http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/conway2

Dilemma of Modern Media, 1912

Flickr image from the National Film and Sound Archive Australia

Cultural Armageddon, 1990s

Cultural Armageddon, 2000s

Cultural Armageddon, 2012Source: University of Southern CaliforniaCredit: Todd Lindeman and Brian Vastag/ The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2011/02/11/GR2011021100614.html

An Obsolete Documentary Form?

Preserving Digital CollectionsPreserving digital collections is the same as

preserving physical collections, except where it is different

Respect the principles of the professionEmbrace the potential of technology

Five Equations of the Cultural Record

Content =DataAnalog =Non-existent

Unconnected

=Invisible

Reusable =ValuableVisualizatio

n=Storytelling

Cyberinfrastructure and the Cultural Record

“Digital cultural heritage resources are a fundamental dataset for the humanities…

… combined with computer networks and software tools, now shape the way that scholars discover and make sense of the human record…

… [and] the way their findings are communicated to students, colleagues, and the

general public”

"The Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences." American Council of Learned Societies (2006).

Counters of Bits and Tellers of Stories

“When it was made simple, counted in bits, Information was found to be everywhere”

-James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (2011)

“It is not just about the data, it is about the story”

-Arianna Huffington (2012)

CTDA

MAGIC/

CSDS

Other Partne

rs

Join Us!

Greg ColatiSr. Director, Archives, Special Collections and Digital Curation

University of Connecticut

gregory.colati@uconn.edu