Vint Cerf on “The Role of Archives in Digital Preservation”

From a Column Published in Communications of the ACM (January 2018) by Vint Cerf:

Some readers may wonder whether the World Wide Web is already an example of an archive. It is not because there is no assurance of long-lasting storage or accessibility of the content. To be sure, the WWW content is a candidate for archiving and the Internet Archive is attempting to do exactly that.
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..archivists of digital content will need to be prescriptive about the structure and encoding of digital artifacts they can process into the archive successfully. A proactive stance could improve the likelihood that digital content can be acquired and preserve.
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a long-lived archive must rely on a business model that matches the desired longevity that might extend 100 years or more. Think of archives housing 1,000-year-old vellum codices, for example. In addition to the extensible standardization of digital representation, then, we will need legal and financial frameworks that assist long-term preservation.

Read the Complete Column (769 words)
Article Appears:
Communications of the ACM ((Vol. 61, No. 1; January 2018)
See Also: From June 28, 2017: Video Interview: Internet Founding Father Vint Cerf on ‘Cybersecuring’ the Internet of Things (IoT)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Preservation, Interviews, News, Preservation, Profiles