The following is a guest post by Erin Engle, Digital Archivist,
NDIIPP. When my family and friends ask what I do at the Library
of Congress, I invariably get questioning looks when I use the
phrase “digital preservation.” The looks turn even more
quizzical when I talk about my work managing a project focusing
on the preservation of geospatial information. It’s a double
whammy of confusion that often leads to “oh that sounds very
interesting” when the person means “I have no idea what you’re
talking about.” Digital preservation is such an abstract topic
that it’s hard to describe with a proverbial 30 second elevator
speech. I talk about how we as a society – institutions and
individuals alike – are creating more and more digital content
(photos, videos, electronic documents) with the latest software
and hardware technologies (computers, smart phones, apps). I
mention that we may want to save some of this content, maybe not
all of it, for posterity because what we create today represents
our cultural digital he