How Do You Know What You Don't Know? Digital Preservation Education

How Do You Know What You Don't Know? Digital Preservation Education

Pedagogy

This journal article talks about the importance of educating those at the local library or school level who are tasked with a digitizing or scanning project but do not have the proper experience to know how to manage or request the proper resources for such a project and are not familiar with the most current and best practices of digital preservation. Molinaro also warns of the pitfalls of not having an adequate plan when it comes to storage of the large amounts of digital information that is generated during a scanning or transfer project. One example she uses is the digitizing of newspaper microfilm which produced large files of information that the library was not able to handle and thus the file types were changed to fit the space they had and many of the files were lost in the process. In such a case Molinaro says that “In reality, a poorly conceived plan is not better than nothing.” This is in response to a common idea that even if the process of digital preservation is flawed, it is still better than nothing. Molinaro would rather see those responsible for digital preservation projects attend one of the many national seminars on the subject so that those on the local library level can be on the same page as many of the national institutions of higher education are.

Molinaro, Mary

Information Standards Quarterly

2010

Polk, Victoria

NISO

Print

Journal Article

http://www.niso.org/publications/isq/free/OP_Molinaro_Education_isqv22no2.pdf

Molinaro, Mary. “How Do You Know What You Don’t Know? Digital Preservation Education.”
Information Standards Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2010): 45-47.