The Value of the Archival Perspective in the Digital Environment

Additional copies are available for $15.00 from the address noted above. Orders must be prepaid, with checks made payable to the Council on Library and Information Resources. Preface The Web is spawning a large mass of information of varying quality and value. From that huge, undifferentiated mass, librarians must sift carefully and assiduously to find material for their patrons that is valuable and trustworthy. Selecting published items for acquisition has presented many challenges over the years, but librarians have been trained to meet those challenges and to shape collections that best serve the needs of their users. What skills and practices will help them in the realm of electronic information? As intellectual content migrates from print, film, and tape to electronic formats, it moves from a world characterized by the fixity and relative permanence of the medium into one in which the stability of the text is easily compromised, the permanence of the intellectual content hard to ensure, and the means of accessing the information controlled by the user, not the creator, publisher, or librarian. The new forms of electronic communication often have more in common with unpublished materials and gray literature than with the materials librarians usually see. Even electronic journals pose problems of version control and challenges to long-term accessibility that are unknown in the print world. In developing new tools and skills for assessing, acquiring, cataloging, and preserving this type of information, librarians often seek answers to questions that archivists and other information specialists have dealt with for years. As Anne Gilliland-Swetland persuasively argues in this report, digital technology is erasing many of the distinctions between custodians of information and custodians of artifacts—museum curators, librarians, archivists, and information technology specialists. This report provides an overview of the roles that archives and archivists have traditionally played in collecting and managing historical evidence. The author describes how archivists are relying on old theoretical approaches while developing new skills to grapple with the avalanche of electronic records. In clarifying the roles that process and context play in determining the value and integrity of electronic records, she offers to librarians and other information specialists fresh insights into how digital information behaves, carries meaning, and gains (or loses) value for users over time. The differences between archives and libraries will continue to be significant. While archivists deal with only one type of document—a record—li-braries deal with many. And while archivists are responsible …