Digitizing History…will it “really” always be available in a digital format?

I apologize for this late post.  I left sick on the last day of class and completely forgot to do this!  Oops!

Universities, museums, libraries, musicians, authors….everyone is jumping on th”digitization” bandwagon.  And why not?  After twelve weeks of reading article after article about the pros of digitization, it it easy to understand what the fuss is all about.  Lets preserve the past for future generations.  Lets make books, pictures, museum objects, etc.  available to the entire public, not just a select few.  Lets put all of the world’s information in one place so that whenever we need ANYTHING, from the writings of Plutarch to a bio on Saddam Hussein, we know where to get it.  Of course, there is a slight problem….what about copyright?  What can be reproduced for everyone to view and what is restricted?  Roy Rosenzweig and Dan Cohen point out in chapter 7 of Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving and Presenting the Past on the Web, most anything that was published prior to 1923 is the “public domain” meaning it can be reproduced without violating a copyright law.  But what about more current materials?  Lets say something is created digitally today, and it is reproduced in a different format for preservation purposes.  Does that violate copyright law?  Copyright law has so many gray areas…there is no black and white.  And what about “Fair Use?”  Portions of new materials can be reproduced for educational purposes, say a professor makes copies of a part of a book for class.  Where do you draw the line?  It all gets confusing, and this could be a deterrent for people who are looking to digitize materials.  People are not so worried about the poems of Callimachus.  He lived over 1,000 years ago.  But lets say for example, a professor wanted to make copies of chapter 7 of Cohen and Rosenzweig’s book for a class.  Does that violate copyright?  Not according the Fair Use act.  But what it a professor made a copy of the entire book?  What then?  Again, there is no black and white, and while I don’t think anything should be COMPLETELY black and white, some things need to be concrete.  I am not saying the law is bad…just confusing.  I just hope it does not influence someone or some university who really wants to take on an amazing digitization project but is afraid of violating some vague copyright law.

So lets say we are allowed to digitize anything and everything.  What then?  What if the format it was created in is no longer usable?  Remember 8-track tapes?  Good luck trying to find a system that is compatible with them today.  I think it is extrememly important that as new technologies emerge, which they do by the second, that we as historians, archivists, computer techies and the like make sure that any new technology that is created is compatible with the old.  Some digitization projects take years….Can you imagine if after all that work, the stories, journals, pictures and what not that has been digitized would not be viewable?  Now that is certainly much scarier than being in violation of some gray-area copyright law.

---