An Ethical Perspective on Political-Economic Issues in the Long-Term Preservation of Digital Heritage

An Ethical Perspective on Political-Economic Issues in the Long-Term Preservation of Digital Heritage

Web Archiving

This article considers long-term preservation of digital heritage from a social justice perspective, with a specific focus on ethical obligations for archivists in first world countries. The authors envision two fictional scenarios to illustrate their argument: in the first example, digital archivists located in a wealthy first-world country “harvest” web content created in an economically disadvantaged country without consent. In the second scenario, archivists in the same first-world country offer to digitize content from a third-world archive and propose a contract that allows both sides access to the digital archive. Lor and Britz argue that in both cases, first world archivists have a systemic advantage, and what they offer is not a collaboration, but essentially exploitation. Drawing on a broad variety of ethical frameworks, Lor and Britz attempt to offer a comprehensive catalogue of moral considerations for fair and equal forms of collaboration.

Lor, Peter Johan, and J.J. Britz

2012

Laura Moeller

Journal article

Lor, Peter Johan, and J.J. Britz. "An Ethical Perspective on Political-Economic Issues in the Long-Term Preservation of Digital Heritage." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63 (2012): 2153–2164.