Goal 4: Synthesize theory and practice within a dynamic, evolving, and diverse information environment.

Outcome 4a. Apply library and information science theories, principles, and research to professional practice.

What to Preserve?
How to prioritize born digital items in an archival setting

       In the archival world there are many schools of thought about what needs to be preserved. Archivists need to constantly evaluate the merit of their collection and the materials in that collection. Not only is there physical material and collections to consider but now archivists need to be aware of born digital materials and whether it needs to be a part of their collection. Then they need to decide how to preserve these materials. 
        First, we need to look at the basics of what should take priority in a collection. Then whether there is digital material that needs to be addressed, found, and preserved. Lastly, we will look at how to preserve these materials. Now, because each archive is unique and has an individual mission, we will be looking at one example to focus on. Using the Dominican University Archive as a case study we can look at these questions and better expand on this subject. The goal of looking at this archive and these questions is that other archivists can better assess their own collection and prioritize their materials physical and digital. 
        The best place to start evaluating what should be preserved is the American Society of Archivists. On their website they describe DAC’S as “Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) is an output-neutral set of rules for describing archives, personal papers, and manuscript collections, and can be applied to all material types. It is the U.S. implementation of international standards (i.e., ISAD[G] and ISAAR[CPF]) for the description of archival materials and their creators” (American Society of Archivist’s website official).  Now these standards are key to helping archivists and other librarians in their position decide what is worth preserving.  It is important to remember these guidelines as we explore this topic of what should be preserved in general and in the physical world. 
         The next important resource that will guide us is looking directly at what the Dominican University Archives states is their main purpose and function. On their website it states, “The Archives is responsible for identifying, appraising, collecting, organizing, describing, preserving, and making available for research and reference Rosary College and Dominican University records of sufficient historical, legal, fiscal or administrative value to warrant permanent preservation.” As we evaluate what we should be preserving from the digital world we will also keep these guidelines of the Dominican Archives in mind.  Most archives have a similar statement of purpose and this will simply act as a guide. 
          There are main interesting articles about what should be preserved and because “digital” is a hot button issue in all libraries fields there are main opinions to shift through. Starting with the broad will help narrow down this subject. One article what had main interesting points is “Digital Preservation: The Conduit through Which Open Data, Electronic Government and the Right to Information Are Implemented.”  In this piece the authors go through current research that is going on that shows how important the digital is to save in archives. It also describes how the access to information is important to the public and the right to information is becoming a part of what archivists must fight for in their work.
          The Next article I found interesting deals specifically with born digital materials and and their place in a university archive.  Since we are using Dominican’s archive as a guide this article is very relevant. In “Digital Preservation Practices in University Libraries: An Investigation of Institutional Repositories in Africa” Anyaoku and other authors look at how the digital materials are being preserved in academic institutions in Africa. It is important for archivists to participate in a world view of the field. Many times, in the archive field it seems like just western ideas are considered and looked at in preserving history. In this article not only does it address key points to consider such as what should be preserved but it does so with a different background than most other articles on the subject. It reminds archivist to keep a broader perspective. 
         Another article that goes into specifics about archives and their role in preserving digital materials by looking at a specific subject is Nathan Moles’s “Preservation for Diverse Users: Digital Preservation and the ‘Designated Community’ at the Ontario Jewish Archives” This article is a wonderful example of what a current archive is doing to prioritize material, especially digital material. Similarly to the Anyaoku article it takes a specific case and goes in depth at exploring how and why things should be preserved. 
         To help preserve the digital we also need to look at how the digital affect people. In the article “How Does Digital Competence Preserve University Students' Psychological Well-Being During the Pandemic? An Investigation from Self-Determined Theory,” written by Wang and others explores how having “digital competence” can affect people, specifically college students. This piece is very important not only for what it says about preservation but how the current pandemic is affecting students and archives. It can be hard to remember we are in the middle of history, major history. This article reminds me of how a local library sponsored a project to tell people’s pandemic stories. It took submissions of poems, drawings, written pieces and more. It than displayed them online. This is a small example of how an archive can preserve important history. Sometimes an archive needs to sponsor projects like this or oral histories to gather a deep and rich perspective of current events.  
          Another important way to prioritize what is important is to look at what has been preserved. In Ian Milligan’s article “Archives: Preserve Our Digital Heritage.” In this article it is wonderfully laid out how the digital is intertwined with what is relevant to today’s culture. Archives need to focus on the now but also the past. If we look at how things have been preserved, we can gain a better understanding of how to preserve things for future generations. This is what this article does. It shows that we need to both consider what has been saved and its impact and what currently needs to be saved. Both need to be examined and depending on the motive and purpose of the archive given the time and energy required.
           Another interesting article that looks at modern issues is Tang’s “Sex in the Archives: The Politics of Processing and Preserving Pornography in the Digital Age.” In this article it looks at several issues that seem taboo or salacious. Often, we look at the easy things to preserve. However, there are so many things that we need to examine our biases and how we preserve things. This article faces several hard issues head on and asks the reader to examine uncomfortable topics. One topic it looks at is how offensive things should be preserved and who’s responsibility it is. This is why archives have a statement of purpose. I think things like pornography might not need to preserve by the average archive but should be by a sex archive. Yet nudity is not always pornography. And I think archives need to carefully consider when it is appropriate to depict nudity and whether they should have procedures to place warnings on materials. Warnings while not ideal, do make it easier for researchers to navigate what they are comfortable with. 
         The final article we to look at prioritize is the article “The Changes in the Way to Create, View and Preserve Digital Information.”  the authors deal with the digital and how to preserve it. The three authors ask “how do we prioritize? Especially with so much digital content?”  These are all questions to carefully consider. The main answer they give is things that impact a community as determined by the archive. This is an eloquently simple answer. However, it works as a fantastic guideline. The main problem is bias. Each person will have a different opinion but in the end it will be the archivist job to determine what is worth preserving. 
          Now that we have explored many resources and their relevance to this topic it is time to apply these schools of thought into an actual archive. The Dominican University Archive has a very large statement of purpose as we previously looked at. Here are a few things that I think should be considered when thinking about what should be added to the archives. Is it directly related to the archive’s statement of purpose? Does it reflect what happened in the past or present? Will it be better preserved somewhere else? As shown previously there is lots of biases in archives that archivists need to self examine, but in the end they get to make the call.  
            Archives have been an important part of society for a long time and has there is more history being made there needs to be changes to keep with the times.  Born digital materials in particular need to be carefully considered and evaluated whether they should be given the time and resources to preserve them. Each archive and other historical institutions need to make their statements of purpose clear so that when they are questioning materials worth they are adding the most relevant material to their collections.

Bibliography
 

Adu, Kofi Koranteng, et al. “Digital Preservation: The Conduit through Which Open Data, Electronic Government and the Right to Information Are Implemented.” Library Hi Tech, vol. 34, no. 4, 2016, pp. 733–747., https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-07-2016-0078. 
Anyaoku, Ebele N., et al. “Digital Preservation Practices in University Libraries: An Investigation of Institutional Repositories in Africa.” Digital Library Perspectives, vol. 35, no. 1, 2019, pp. 41–64., https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-10-2017-0041.
Cordon-Garcia, Jose Antonio, and Raquel Gomez-Diaz. “The Changes in the Way to Create, View and Preserve Digital Information.” Information Resources Management Journal, vol. 27, no. 3, 2014, p. iv. 
Dominican archives website : https://research.dom.edu/archives 
Milligan, Ian. “Archives: Preserve Our Digital Heritage.” Nature, vol. 497, no. 7449, 2013, pp. 317–317., https://doi.org/10.1038/497317b. 
Moles, Nathan. “Preservation for Diverse Users: Digital Preservation and the ‘Designated Community’ at the Ontario Jewish Archives.” Journal of Documentation, vol. 78, no. 3, 2022, pp. 613–630., https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2021-0041. 
SAA Website: https://www2.archivists.org/groups/technical-subcommittee-on-describing-archives-a-content-standard-dacs/describing-archives-a-content-standard-dacs-second- 
Tang, GVGK. “Sex in the Archives: The Politics of Processing and Preserving Pornography in the Digital Age.” The American Archivist 80, 2 (Fall/Winter 2017): 439-452.   
Wang, Xinghua, et al. “How Does Digital Competence Preserve University Students' Psychological Well-Being During the Pandemic? An Investigation From Self-Determined Theory.” Front Psychol, vol. 12, 2021, pp. 652594–652594., https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.652594. 
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