The paradox of digital preservation

Preserving digital information is plagued by short media life, obsolete hardware and software, slow read times of old media, and defunct Web sites. Herein lies the paradox: we want to maintain digital information intact, but we also want to access this information in a dynamic use context. Failure to address digital preservation problems is analogous to squandering potential professional, personal and economic gains, contributing to cultural and intellectual poverty and resulting in exorbitant costs for recovery. We are compelled to meet the research challenge to resolve the conflict between the creation context and the use context to facilitate digital information preservation.