contributed articles
Doi: 10.1145/1409360.1409376
and boardroom. It is difficult to imagine the information age without unlimited access to and availability of the
digital data that is its foundation.
Digital data is also fragile. For most
By fRancine BeRman of us, an underlying assumption is that
our data will be accessible whenever
Got Data? we want it. We also regularly confront
the fallacy of this assumption; most
of us (or our friends) have had hard
drives crash with the loss of valuable
a Guide to Data information or seen storage media become obsolete, rendering information
unavailable (think floppy disks). Loss,
damage, and unavailability of impor-
Preservation tant digital business, historical, and
official documents regularly make the
news, further highlighting our dependence on electronic information.
As a supporting foundation for our
in the efforts in the information age, digital
data in the cyberworld is analogous to
infrastructure in the physical world,
including roads, bridges, water, and
information electricity. And like physical infrastructure, we want our data infrastructure to
be stable, predictable, cost-effective,
and sustainable. Creating systems with
age these and other critical characteristics
in the cyberworld of information technology involves tackling a spectrum of
technical, policy, economic, research,
education, and social issues. The management, organization, access, and
preservation of digital data is arguably
a “grand challenge” of the information
age.
As a society, we have only begun to
address this challenge at a scale concomitant with the deluge of data available to us and its importance in the
modern world. This article explores
the key trends and issues associated
with preserving the digital data that is
the natural resource of the information age and what’s needed to keep it
manageable, accessible, available, and
secure. (For common terms associated
with digital data management and
preservation, see the sidebar “Digital
Data Terms and Definitions.”)
Pho Togra Ph by Thomas h Erbrich
Tools for surviving a data deluge to ensure
your data will be there when you need it.
imagine the modern world without digital data—
anything that can be stored in digital form and
accessed electronically, including numbers, text,
images, video, audio, software, and sensor signals.
We listen to digital music on our iPods, watch
streaming video on Youtube, record events with
digital cameras, and text our colleagues, family, and
friends on blackberrys and cell phones. Many of our
medical records, financial data, and other personal
and professional information are in digital form.
Moreover, the internet and its digital products have
become our library, shopping mall, classroom,
Data cyberinfrastructure
