Digital Curation

Left unattended, digital information degrades over time. Even if the information’s bits are correctly preserved (a difficult task in itself) the technological context surrounding the bits—the computing platforms, programming languages, applications, file formats, and so forth—will change sufficiently over time until the information is no longer usable. Changes in the information’s social context are just as significant. The communities and organizations involved in the information’s initial creation and use may attach different values and interpretation to the information over time, or cease to exist altogether. And the passage of time only exacerbates contemporary problems such as establishing the authenticity, quality, and provenance of the information.