The Digital Preservation Imperative: An Ecosystem View

As the information universe becomes increasingly digital, there is a growing need to preserve digital assets that represent the intellectual capital of scientific disciplines, educational communities, and government and cultural agencies. This need is both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Digital resources, particularly digital data, are proliferating at a staggering rate. According to the International Data Co (IDC), the amount of data worldwide grew 48% between 2011 and 2012 to 2.7 zettabytes, or 2.7 billion terabytes. Additionally, digital resources are qualitatively different from analog resources (print and media) in terms of fragility and complexity. Digital resources are not just more fragile than their analog counterparts -- they are also more complex. In the analog world, a book appears to be a wonderfully simple thing. Scan it into digital form, however, and it becomes a "complex readable.