InformaticMonad

Have you ever considered the archival profession? You're a natural! 1) your first questions touch on an archival concept called "appraisal." This type of appraisal has nothing to do with monetary value, and is really the question of whether to archive or not. Luckily this is not an issue new to digital things, and archivists have a well-developed body of theory on appraisal. 2) I can guarantee the biggest issues you'll face are ownership and copyright. Lastly, please note that alone 3D modeling and digitization are NOT digital preservation. Digital preservation is the series of policies and actions used to manage risk of loss after digitization.

Brandon--emulation of the entire hard drive is a totally viable option. That's what Emory did with the Salman Rushdie materials, and a possible long-term goal for the Sontag collection. However currently, Sontag's drives are mounted in a Windows 7 environment. The emails are accessible via Mailstore and Muse. The other files (about 29,000, mostly text, 6.26 GB total) are viewed using Windows explorer and the new Microsoft Word--pretty straight forward. Emulation can be a preservationists' ideal because we love to save context and content, but often times we need to entertain the most practical solution first. The best parts about working with digital materials are the opportunities to experiment while finding what's best for both archivists and researchers.

I'm a digital archivist in California, and a new professional. Basically, I started asking questions and haven't stopped. Years ago as a philosophy undergrad, I became captivated by digital archives while in a work-study position at my University's Archives and Special Collections. I created an unpaid internship for myself through the philosophy department to research the topic further, and used that experience to score a Junior Fellowship at the Library of Congress. There, the people involved with the NDIIPP program and the National Digital Stewardship Alliance helped push my interests into overdrive. Now I have my masters in library and information science with specializations in archives and digital preservation, and I can laugh at the people who said I'd be unemployed with a philosophy degree. The philosophical issues my profession deals with are never ending!