With every contract I work on it seems that people are always trying to get rid of paper. I’ve heard both sides of the great debate on paper and how we can (or maybe can’t) get along without it. Issues that weigh heavily with me are long-term preservation, retrieval, and disaster preparedness. For two of the three issues named, I feel like paper gets dismissed too easily in favor of its digital counterpart.
Some months ago I read something where somebody was advocating we should be printing out the digital documents we want to retain for backup purposes. I have to admit I felt a bit conflicted reading this comment. I would advocate for better digital preservation strategies and more awareness on this angle before I would even think about recommending printing as a backup. Yet, when I started to think about the disasters endangering our information in either physical or electronic formats, paper had some strong selling points.
The table below lists different types of disasters and identifies if paper and/or electronic is impacted.
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Type of Disaster
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Paper (Physical)
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Electronic
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Comments
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Flood (Water Damage)
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Y
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Y
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Both formats can be destroyed by water. Paper can sometimes be “saved”. Perhaps electronic equipment can also be “saved” if it’s treated quickly enough.
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Fire
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Y
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Y
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Electronic equipment may be destroyed, but if content is stored in the cloud it will be saved.
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Vermin
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Y
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Y
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While it may seem vermin impacts only paper, insects and rodents can also chew through electronic equipment (e.g. wires).
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Mold
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Y
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N
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|
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Theft
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Y
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Y
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Even though electronic devices can be stolen, they have better options available for protection against theft such as encryption, password protections, and remote wiping.
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Hacking
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?
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Y
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I put a “?” for paper/physical because a database storing records of paper content could get hacked and compromise content without seeing the actual documents.
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Readability
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N
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Y
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Unless you consider that people are no longer being taught how to read cursive, paper doesn’t need anything special to view, whereas electronic content requires machines, software, and electricity to view.
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Hardware/Software Obsolescence
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N
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Y
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Technology updates rapidly requiring electronic content to be migrated so it can be accessed. Older formats dependent on special hardware (e.g. VHS, cassette tapes, etc.) must also be migrated, or all the appropriate hardware also has to be maintained.
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People are always very quick to talk about how superior digital documents are to their paper counterparts. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the greatest digital preservation strategy is based on the ease with which we can replicate digital content and therefore store it in many different places that is it’s best form of protection against disaster. At least one of these instances is sure to survive the disasters listed above.
It always amazes me how many places a digital document can survive and thrive. I’m usually pretty quick to delete or file things away, but every once in a while I get a little over eager with the delete key. It never takes long for me to recall other places that digital document lives, or could be living (e.g. as an email attachment in the sent folder or inbox, in the downloads folder, in the trash bin that hasn’t been emptied, in Dropbox/Drive/Evernote, etc.) as alternative options.
As an information professional, it makes me uneasy to think about all these other places digital documents can live and how difficult it is to control them. Even though replication may be digital’s greatest preservation strategy, it is also one of digital’s greatest challenges, at least for eggheads like me who get hired to manage and control this stuff.