Good Archives Make Good Scholars: Reflections on Recent Steps Toward the Archiving of Digital Information

Abstract

"The Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information argued that the value of digital information rests in what it contributes to our cultural memory. Because cultural memory is a public good, it follows that insuring against the possible loss of such memory by the archiving of digital information would also be a public good. The joint economic interest of publishers, authors, and the scholarly community in electronic journals as intellectual property is reason to suggest that archiving them may not be a public good in the strictest sense of the term. Still, the archiving of digital information has special properties as a kind of modified public good that demands special attention."