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A Communicological critique of evaluative norms for digital preservation success
Stephen Abrams
Abstract
This thesis examines the adequacy of existing measures of success for the long-term preservation of the of electronic content that plays such a central role in all aspects of contemporary life. It finds the concept of success poorly defined in theory and inadequately supported in practice by libraries, archives, museums, datacenters, and repositories. In response, this work outlines a new approach for evaluating success that complements the objective measure of preservation management with the subjective assessment of individual human experience when using preserved resources as vehicles for technically-mediated communication across time.