William Aspray

Megan Alicia Winget

There has been an explosion in the creation and use of digital media over the past quarter century and in particular over the past decade. As the varieties of digital media multiply, scholars are beginning to examine its origins, organization, and preservation, which present new challenges compared to the organization and preservation of traditional media such as books, papers, films, photographs, music scores, and works of art. In order to examine from multiple perspectives issues related to history, preservation, and ontology of digital media, editors of this volume organized an invitation-only workshop on digital media. The participants were carefully chosen to represent a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, ranging from humanities to informationstudies to technology to history to communication theory to fine arts. The book is organized in four parts, each representing a different perspective on digital media: preservation, interaction, organization, and history. The preservation section considers the problems of archiving digital media for long-term preservation. Many digital objects are readily copied but are fragile and not designed for preservation, and this nature of digital objects provides both challenges and opportunities for adapting archival practice. The remaining sections look at the interaction between technological changes and cultural practices, the organization of digital media, and the history of digital media and how technology has changed over time. The wealth of varied perspectives collected together in this volume provides new light on the topic of digital media.

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