Vviewpoints

I M A G E B Y C O S M A

ects is digital, of course, and digital preservation techniques often need to be supplemented by longer established techniques which are widely understood in the gallery, library, archive, and museum (GLAM) domains, but are perhaps less well known elsewhere. The more obvious lacunae in preservation awareness among applicants for public funding are, in principle at least, relatively easy to address, and call for little more than taking advantage of the numerous sources of in-

COMPUTERS MAY BE the best re- pository of all time for infor- mation—as long as the oper- ating system or storage medium is not out of date— but they are unable to record or reproduce the sensual presence of a material work of art. Unlike the qualities of material works of art, games and arbitrary interaction do not qualify the computer as a medium for memories and recollections.” 1

In common with most senior academics, I am required from time to time to offer assessments on applications for research funding. Over recent years, I have been pleased to see funding agencies increasingly asking applicants to pay formal attention to the means by which the outputs of publically funded research may be preserved over the medium to long term. A second, although clearly related, concern is how applicants plan to ensure that ongoing access to research results may be achieved. These are good questions, and the fact they are being asked represents real progress, but unfortunately, for the most part, they are not well answered.

Based on my experience, a number
of misunderstandings appear to be
very widespread. Chief among these is
that preservation may be said to have
been achieved if a proportion (which
may or may not be a significant pro-
portion) of the digital outputs of a
project are backed up and stored at
some point during the project’s life-
time. A related misunderstanding is
the notion that all that is required to
assure access is that the project team
should develop a website and keep it
“
active for a year or so after the conclu-
sion of a project. There is no obvious
consensus on what constitutes the
‘medium’ or ‘long’ term, and very little
comprehension that preservation and
access need to be considered even be-
fore a project begins. The choices we
make about file formats, data models,
hardware, and software all impact on
how easy it will be to actively preserve
information for future use over the
years and decades ahead. Not all the
material generated by research proj-

Historical Reflections
Nailing Smoke
Curation at the bleeding edge of technology.
DOI: 10.1145/3012423