Online or on paper? That’s one question at the heart of a debate over Obama’s planned presidential library which would, unlike the those of his predecessors, contain no physical archives.
The yet-to-be-built library was thrust into the spotlight this week with the unexpected release of a legal agreement on the digitization of documents raising new questions about access and preservation.
Historians have rightly criticized the digital-only plan, arguing that it would limit research. The new Obama institution would also likely lack a dedicated staff of librarians that make the document collections more than large-scale data dumps.
These historians are right, and Obama, if he wants to live up to his stated goal of increased transparency, should not forgo the physical documents.
Physical documents, despite their fragility, are surprisingly resilient compared with rapidly changing technology. Take for example, a floppy disk or CD, once great ways to store and share digital information. Now, you’d be hard-pressed to sit down and get at that information without a old computer on hand. Most modern laptops don’t have a disc drive, much less the ability to read a floppy disk.
A paper or a photograph kept in physical form, however, is still easy to read. Sure, you might have to dig them out of a dusty folder, but they’re not the literally unreadable plastic block of outdated technology.
Furthermore, part of the importance of archival research is the possibility of stumbling upon something unexpected that turns out to be vitally important. When documents are stored in folders grouped by topic, for example, a researcher is often required to flip through several documents, which often leads to such spontaneous finds.
That process reveals important contextual and related information which, even if it doesn’t end up in the finished work, can be critical to an accurate understanding of research topics. That’s not impossible with digitized collections, but especially when documents are searchable, the need to flip through other pages is lost.
Moreover, the value of an archive is not merely the documents themselves but the curation and the work of archivists. Visiting an archive means engaging with an expert who works there and has either produced finding aids invaluable to digging into vast collections or is on hand to direct researchers to useful documents.
A purely digital collection, in part because it lacks the physicality of space, would be unlikely to offer such services. That would greatly inhibit the work of historians writing about the Obama years.
Even more troubling, digital archives in an age of increasingly sophisticated digital manipulation and cyberattacks are vulnerable to new threats. With no physical backup, the collection could be taken down entirely or otherwise crippled, perhaps deliberately blocking access to records critical to understanding current events. Although physical structures are not immune to manipulation or even attack, it’s much easier to launch an Internet attack than to destroy a physical structure containing documents.
Digital archives can be a great resource. They allow for researchers all over the world to access documents without having to make costly and time-consuming trips. They are generally easy to search. They make collections and individual documents much more accessible. The digitization of documents is not the problem here — rather, it’s the lack of physical access.
Ideally, modern archives should have both physical and digital collections and allow for both on-sight study and remote access with the goal of facilitating all kids of research. That’s especially true when it comes to history as important as that pertaining to a president of the Untied States who made so much, at least in his speeches, of transparency and openness.
