Systems of Care

subtitle: Comparison with analogue preservation.

One tiny but valuable example are the request slips used to manage access to printed items at the British Library, as shown in this video called “Journey of a collection item”…

Using slips of paper to keep track of where items are! How simple! How obvious!

These kinds of access support systems become so familiar that they become part of the furniture, often literally! The processes to manage and maintain access get absorbed into shared practices, often spread across multiple teams with different responsibilities for different aspects of the access system.

Well, it is now. But it’s not really that simple, it’s just familiar. At some point in the past this process was designed. The risks were analysed and the mitigations put in place.

We’ve had many, many years to work on handling print. We’re still learning how to manage digital resources. But worse than that, we’re still in the process of working out if it’s possible reach that level of standardisation at all. It’s possible that the nature of digital media means that we will never be able to ‘solve’ digital access and preservation in the same way.