Editor's Introduction

On Valentine's Day 2003, the Library of Congress announced congressional approval of the "Plan for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program" (NDIIPP). This follows a $99.8 million appropriation in December 2000 (PL 106-54) and the publication in October 2002 of an initial study by the Library of Congress, "Preserving Our Digital Heritage: Plan for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program." This legislation charges the Library of Congress with the job of leading a nationwide effort to plan and execute the preservation of digital content. The present approval merely releases money for the next phase of the plan from the original appropriation, but it also asks that up to $75 million be raised from private sources. This is a major advancement and puts the United States slightly ahead of the curve in reference to digital preservation strategies. It is also a welcome change from the political and financial limbo in which television/video preservation still finds itself after the completion of the Library of Congress's television and video preservation study in 1997. Given the ever-increasing tendency to transfer all video material to digital formats, one might even hope that television and video will take care of themselves in the wake of the digital revolution.

I would encourage all AMIA members to read the NDIIPP plan, which is downloadable as a PDF file from the Library of Congress Web site. This 66-page document, plus appendices of another 250-plus pages, was written by a committee of experts, including stakeholders from many professional associations for entertainment media, universities, libraries, museums, foundations, publishers, software programmers, and Web designers. On second thought, given AMIA's own recent digital emphasis at the Boston conference, as well as the establishment of a standing committee within AMIA for digital issues, this publication is in fact a must-read for all moving image archivists.

What is most striking about the findings of the committee that authored the NDIIPP plan is the notion that digital preservation presents such monumental problems that no single public or private institution or government body will be able to solve them. Rather, it will take a collective effort over years. Indeed, the most difficult issues are not the well-known technical problems facing digital archivists—solving these are really only a matter of time, given the lightning speed with which the technology is advancing (see Jim Lindner and Jim Wheeler's regular updates on the AMIA listserv for the latest developments)—but rather the social, political, economic, and legal issues surrounding the dissemination, preservation, and access of digital information. For example, what kinds of selection criteria need to be developed for the preservation of digital information, given the fact that, in the words of the report, it is "extremely fragile, inherently impermanent, and difficult to assess for long-term value"? Web sites appear and disappear with alarming frequency; much digital media is indeed meant to be ephemeral, rather than for the history books. Can we leave the responsibility for digital preservation solely in the hands of the legal copyright holders, as has traditionally been the case with film and television? Or will that lead to the loss of a significant percentage of all digital content and the creation of a huge body of orphaned gigabytes, as has similarly happened in the analog world of film and television?

Digital preservation will be a collaborative effort, involving the creation of selection and collection development policies, the cooperative formulation of intellectual property policies and practices, the development of business models for both the private and the public sector, and the initiation of best practices and standards. First and foremost for the NDIIPP will be the creation of "an advanced digital preservation infrastructure," comprising a digital preservation network and digital preservation architecture. While the architecture is a matter of developing a technical framework, the network will indeed depend on the collaboration of everyone involved in digital media, including the great majority of AMIA members...