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Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2019

Jeff Rothenberg
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Extract

The year is 2045, and my grandchildren (as yet unborn) are exploring the attic of my house (as yet unbought). They find a letter dated 1995 and a CD-ROM (compact disk). The letter claims that the disk contains a document that provides the key to obtaining my fortune (as yet unearned). My grandchildren are understandably excited, but they have never seen a CD before—except in old movies—and even if they can somehow find a suitable disk drive, how will they run the software necessary to interpret the information on the disk? How can they read my obsolete digital document?

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Legal Information , Volume 26 , Issue 1-3 , 1998 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by the International Association of Law Libraries 

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References

Short bibliography

Archival Management of Electronic Records, Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report no. 13, Bearman, David, ed., Archives and Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh, 1991 (ISSN 1042-1459).Google Scholar
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Research Issues in Electronic Records, published for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Washington, D.C., by the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn. 1991.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, Jeff. “Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents,” Scientific American, January 1995 (Vol. 272, Number 1), pp. 24–29.Google Scholar
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Taking a byte out of history: the archival preservation of federal computer records. Report of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations, Nov. 6. 1990 (House Report 101-978).Google Scholar