Preservation Reservations

When thinking of digital preservation, I first think about the creative work being conducted by faculty and students right at the iSchool, who are interested in studying how to go about ensuring the preservation of records, and also questions of privacy and access. What is permanent and what isn't? How to determine what needs to be erased, and successfully do so, and how to select and preserve what needs to be kept? These questions cross disciplines - archives and records management, information systems and design, critical information studies...Thinking about digital preservation lead to pondering about metadata.

In a recent INF1001 lecture (which somehow always seems to relate, at least indirectly, to Research Methods! Another example of the interdisciplinary interaction which I mentioned above, and which Professor Galey has woven throughout our class lectures), we discussed big data and surveillance. We discussed and shared ideas about the numerous "tracks" we leave behind via specific practices and using specific gadgets, including phone records, online usernames and passwords, credit cards and online shopping, apps, text messages, Google accounts (including this blog of course), uploading pictures and videos, sending e-mails, and much more.

While these maps are unique to each person, individuals do not necessarily own the materials and information once they have released them to the world. This we learned in further detail by reading Terms of Service for numerous social media websites (a bit of a scary affair!).  The metadata of these practices (length of phone calls, locations, numbers etc), can be incredibly revelatory, even though it may not seem as obvious as the content of our conversations and discussions. In effect, metadata, if collected, can be used to construct incredibly detailed records of our activities.

NSA and surveillance aside, metadata would be an amazing tool with which to study history. How could the sources of information listed above, which were not available until recently, be used ethically and creatively to learn and research about an important figure, an event, an object, an artifact? It might be an interesting pastiche,  a collage of information on different platforms shaped and controlled by specific stakeholders. So discussions of preservation need to include not only how to do so, but also how the original work was made and under what circumstances (which includes detailed knowledge of relevant software, including its makeup and policies), and why. Programs, software, websites, social media, etc. are not neutral entities, but created with a specific agenda and interests. What I've been trying to get at, in a rather roundabout way, is that in effect, preservation of digital texts and artefacts will always require a measure of context, a detailed critique about the process and circumstances that went into the creation of a text.