DIGITAL CULTURAL HERITAGE

Reliable long-term preservation of cultural heritage is an increasingly important question in the rapidly digitising world. Archivists and ITC experts have expressed their concerns on the so called digital dark age: a phenomenon where significant amount of important cultural heritage is lost due to rapid digitisation of information and lack of reliable long-term preservation methods. For instance, various organisations changed their internal correspondence into email format during the 1990’s before records management had come up with proper methods for preserving email correspondence. Similarly, the development of the Internet is a phenomenon that partly defines the historical significance of the last two decades. What is left of the early days of the web for future historians’ use? While historians have so far relied on a rich source of paper-based documentation, future historians may face a prospect of empty archives.