Bridging the Gap: Taking Practical Steps Toward Managing Born-Digital Collections in Manuscript Repositories

Abstract

A few years ago I attended a lecture by a well-known digital libraries researcher who, when discussing the issue of digital preservation, clicked forward to a PowerPoint slide that included Pablo Picasso’s iconic ink illustration of Don Quixote, the placement of which seemed a little too conveniently symbolic to be accidental. Regardless of the presenter’s intent, it is clear that the quest for sound and simple processes to support the management and preservation of electronic records—now often referred to as “born-digital” records—has remained a Quixotic one for many manuscripts curators and archivists, even more than two decades into . . .