Initially ARSC's role was to help people find things which had been
recorded and preserved. I believe that to still be one of the primary roles
of ARSC, and it seems technology, cataloging of resources, and the Internet
has continued to help that role better than any of us starting out thought
possible.

After 50 years of learning that few of the media on which things are
recorded continue to be stable, we have definitely moved to a preservation
priority for many libraries, collectors, engineers, archives and museums.
Everyone who deals with recorded sound.

Given the floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the closing of cloud services,
along with government closing down sites with information which can no
longer be found, one has to wonder if there is any security other than a
continuous preservation of the preserved becoming the normal operating
process of any of these collections of materials. I'm worried that the
Internet Archive is not saving enough, and have had to use it a number of
time to retrieve lost articles; sometimes not finding them.

I believe there are many for profit organizations which merge or go out of
business, have fires, devastating storm damage, et al. are not equiped to
handle preservation of what they have, and I'm aware of one energy company
merging with another basically trashed their library of engineering
information, losing important information of wire connection
information...requiring engineers to re -test metals on certain connections
before repair was possible.

There seems to be a great need to convince corporations they need serious
preservation policies. I don't have a clue where one would start. Certain
laws require the keeping of certain records; perhaps there would be a law
entertained for corporate preservation funds be maintained for taking on
the process. ;-)

Since
Paul T. Jackson
Trescott Research
Steilacoom, WA 98338
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trescottresearch.com