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A Future with No History Meets a History with No Future: How Much Do We Need to Know About Digital Preservation

Digital preservation is a daunting challenge. It is a paradox that the cumulative effect of more than a decade of research and development in the topic seems to have made it impenetrable too. We started with predictions of data loss and since then our wellintentioned enthusiasm has produced great reams of blogroll, huge stacks of reports, endless screeds of code and toppling towers of power-point. The new projects, the new agencies, the acronyms, the jargon, the bluster and the debate constitute a discourse that would more likely discourage a novice than reassure them. Initially doom was our only colour scheme but in the last decade we seem to have settled for a literature in two forms: accessible, superficial doomladen premonitions of imminent disaster; or deathless cryptic monotones about partial solutions to infinitesimal problems. Both are prone to exaggeration: neither are very persuasive for terribly long. There are times I pity my students.