Dear Suraj Rambhia:
Thank you for your important commentary on the hazards information management in the digital world. You’ve highlighted an issue that archivists have been concerned about for many years. The digital world has brought to us many beautiful and wonderful things. Ideas can be shared in the blink of an eye across thousands of miles and without ever leaving the safety of your office or home. Information exists everywhere for the grabbing, some of it well thought-out and meaningful and other bits not worth the keyboard they were typed on.
Librarians and archivists seek to sift through all that is created, providing a careful, studied eye to the value of the information contained within documents and records created in our everyday lives. The multitude of the digital world has made this task even more difficult as you alluded to in your commentary but we have no relented.
Currently, archivists on many levels of government and industry have been and are working alongside traditional IT departments to appraise and capture what truly needs to be saved for business application and posterity, and it is no different here at Stony Brook.
While it happens behind the scenes, there is a true effort to provide guidance and assistance to people in determining what needs to be kept and what does not. This is something the library has been doing (our own cooperative work together to microfilm and scan The Statesman and preserve older photographs from your photo morgue is just one example) for many years and will continue to do well into the future.
F. Jason Torre, University Archivist