Developing Reliable Digital Information
 
Many exciting developments are taking place in libraries today. There are libraries that are relying heavily on digital content, libraries partnering in distance education, libraries developing new databases, libraries studying users' behavior with online resources, libraries working on policy issues affecting access, and libraries addressing technical challenges. There are numerous experiments that will demonstrate libraries' involvement with digital content. Projects abound.

However, most of these projects have short life lines. Many of the efforts are funded with "soft" or one-time money. And there is no assurance that researchers will be able to reliably use the majority of these resources for a long period of time into the future or that the resources will continue to exist as a means for replicating today's research environment. This uncertainty is quite different from the ways in which researchers could expect continuity and reliability from libraries in the past. Yet we seem to be carrying forward our assumption that digital information will be there in the future, just as the printed medium has "been there" for centuries.

This issue of the permanence of digital records (I hesitate to use the word permanent) is far from new. In 1990 the federal government's report "Taking a Byte Out of History: The Archival Preservation of Federal Computer Records" stimulated discussion in various sectors. That report predicted that within ten years, by the year 2000, 75 percent of all federal transactions would be handled electronically. The same report pointed to the well-known problems experienced with the 1960 census data, citing it as one example of the rapid pace at which computer information can become obsolete. The report asserted the need for improvements: "The Federal Government must take steps to identify, preserve, and provide for the practical use of information of historical interest created and stored on computers. . . . Managing electronic records to ensure long-term availability is the most significant challenge facing the archival community."

In 1990, at the time of that report, the National Archives and Records Administration already had twenty years of experience with accessioning electronic records. But as alarmed as many were, their earlier experience could barely predict the chaos and creativity that would arrive with the Internet and the powerful personal computing devices that we now use.

How do we deal with the rapid obsolescence in hardware and software produced by industry? When a leading officer of a major technology corporation bluntly states that he creates products for only a three-year market presence, this is not reassuring to libraries-institutions whose mission is to ensure a reliable trail of information. Likewise, it is not reassuring to know that there are data- refreshment schemes that will lose only a small percentage of the data-or to hear publishers and vendors propose that "what should be saved for the future is only that which is used today," leaving popularity to be the measure of significance.

However much we intend to keep, there are still no standards for the permanence of digital items. We know that certain kinds of paper can last for many centuries. Microfilm has been stress-tested to show that under good storage conditions, it too can last hundreds of years. The jury is out on digital materials: some formats are rated to last fifty years, but others have a much shorter life span. And if we do indeed maintain the bits, will they be readable if the operating software changes? Obsolescence of both software and hardware must be considered.

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