Reading a press release out of UCSD, this comment from the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access [pdf] caught my eye:
A recent study by the International Data Corporation (IDC) said that in 2007, the amount of digital data began to exceed the amount of storage to retain it, and will continue to grow faster than storage capacity from here on. The IDC study predicts that by 2011, our “digital universe” … will be 10 times the size it was in 2006.
That sounds about right, and is a little alarming. The University of Montana Mansfield Library recently digitized a run of Salish-Kootenai tribal newspapers called the Char-Koosta News. While this was a relatively small project, it still amounted to the creation of 26,633 files at 253 GB of storage (and that doesn’t include what’s available on the public website.) If we are able to ramp up production 10x by 2011, we’re looking at an additional 2.5TB of data and possibly 270k files that will need to preserved, both compressed and uncompressed, from that point forward. It’s a bit staggering.
The report has a list of coming challenges seem spot on to me:
- Inadequacy of funding models to address long-term access and preservation needs.
- Confusion and/or lack of alignment between stakeholders, roles, and responsibilities with respect to digital access and preservation.
- Inadequate institutional, enterprise, and/or community incentives to support the collaboration needed to reinforce sustainable economic models.
- Complacency that current practices are “good enough.”
- Fear that digital access and preservation is too big to take on.
The last two bulletts will be the two I’ll be focusing on initially here at worrk.
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