Digitalpublishing has greatly transformed the publishing world. like editorial and have succeeded in surpassing the print media in terms of speed,productivity, and quality. Though there is no argument against thefact that technological innovation like this is a boon but it canbecome a bane if constructive steps aren't taken. The mostimportant drawback of digital information is that it is not at alldurable. In addition, if measures like data archiving isn't takenthen the purpose of going digital won't be gained.
Need of Data Archiving
The life of digital informationis far less when compared to printed materials. It can become veryeasily corrupted and unfit to use. This intensifies the need of dataarchiving otherwise the old digital materials can never be used bythe future generation. What is required is a little effort andcontinual investment in order to preserve the digital informationforever and ever.
Now preserving digitalinformation won't alone serve the purpose, the technology used tocreate that needs to be preserved. Otherwise, with technologyadvancing every single day, it won't take days for the currenttechnology to be outdated and replaced by much more advanced one. Bypreserving the technology, it would be easy for the future generationto view or use the digital data without any technical hitch. Sincethe time gap between new technology and old technology is very shortthe decision of archiving must be taken or rather carried out withoutany delay.
How to preserve digital data?
The steps for data archivingcannot be started after the object has been created. It must startwhen the object is being created. This makes it easy for the objectto be digitally archived and preserved. Similarly, careful attentionmust be given to issues of consistency, format, standardization, andmetadata description in the very beginning of the creation of theobject itself.
Therefore, if digitalization hasmade life easy and smooth then a little more effort in the form ofdigital (data) preservation can help it to stay forever and ever.
