A Model of and Support for a Digital Preservation Infrastructure that Connects Individuals to Libraries

Libraries and other memory organizations, such as museums and local historical societies, are very aware of the crisis in digital preservation and are taking steps to preserve our collective digital cultural heritage (LeFurgy, 2005; Ross & Hedstrom, 2005). In contrast, Marshall et al’s (2006) research suggests that individual consumers are far less aware of the impermanent nature of their digital possessions, or to the extent that they are aware, feel disempowered to do anything about it. As a result, valuable representations of individuals’ personal memories intended for future generations will be lost through ignorance and/or benign neglect (Yakel, 2004), and representations of family and social histories will be lost to what has been called the "digital dark ages" (Kuny, 1998). Many individuals are amassing large amounts of digital content because, like libraries, they have access to inexpensive and seemingly endless storage capability as well as to the high-powered computing needed to facilitate the creation and the downloading of digital content (Beagrie, 2005). However, the personal digital information environment offers limited infrastructure for content organization and

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