The preservation of digital records (photos, websites, articles, posts, etc.) is important because we live in a digital age where almost everything created can be digitized or has a digital component. The majority of Newspaper companies and even Magazines today have a digital version as well as a print version. Digitalization has given historians an incredible resource to preserving the past yet it has also brought with it many new challenges.

Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era by Roy Rosenzweig highlights many of these issue and is a very informative piece on advantages and disadvantages of digital media and the preservation of digital records. It also brings up a very interesting point about how the abundance of records and widely available sources of information to historians and the general public can be overwhelming and might make historical analysis seem less necessary and lessen its value. The question “will abundance bring better or more thoughtful history?” is one which deserves some thought and careful consideration. Rosenzweig also highlights the challenges of digitizing records and notes how digitized sources are not t quite as safe or secure as they might seems. I thought is was interesting how he points out that hard copy sources such as books and papers can age slowly yet if a digital file is damages in any way or if any part of it becomes corrupt the whole source is entirely destroyed. The method of digital preservation needs to be constantly re-evaluated and I think it can be concluded that sources can never be fully preserved. Items should be continually put in new digital formats, update to be able to be read by different programs and software. Digital preservation is a war that historians and archivist will have to fight for the whole foreseeable future. 

Lastly when I was taking a quiz on the LOC website about digital preservation I thought it was cool that they preserve enough digital records to equal over 66 million books in print. (that’s a lot of information!). The Digital Hurricane Memory Bank which I looked at for class this week was also a neat site. The layout and design worked well with the content and it was pleasing to look at. It was easy to use and contained lots of valuable information.