Digitization as a priority, but not an exclusive point of access

[sallyhadden]

The strategic plan uses this language: "By FY 2026, NARA will digitize 500 million pages of records and make them available
online to the public through the National Archives Catalog." While digitization is certainly a laudable goal, it cannot be the only form of access the public has to original records. a) Digital media stop being supported. Digital media no longer supported include microcards, laserdiscs, Betamax tapes, CD-ROMs, Zip drives, cassette tapes, and many others. While digitization is a sound idea, many digital media simply are no longer accessible because other forms of digital access have superseded them, and the market has moved on to other types of media. Therefore, access to original paper versions remain essential. b) Microfilm fails. I have held in my hands microfilm made in the 1980s that is cracked, scratched, and unusable in a microfilm reader. Without the original, the microfilm might as well be made of paint...it's unreadable. c) Original documents can reveal relationships that digital media obscure. When documents are pulled apart for filming, their original arrangement can be lost or less obvious. Inspection on-site allows the researcher to recover relationships that existed due to how documents are interfiled or referenced from one group to another. d) Original documents can reveal information when read under ultraviolet, high intensity, or other lighting solutions. One need only look at the documents left by James Madison about the Constitutional Convention (at the Library of Congress), read under spectrographic analysis, to see words he crossed out, replaced, or altered more than once, to know that the original document can go on revealing secrets some 200 years after it was created. The same is true for all originals. Microfilm copies do not capture all the information there can be had from original documents. This is especially true for documents that have tight bindings, such that microfilm cannot capture legible images for material in the gutter of a book or bound volume. Only the original makes reading that material possible.

I could continue in this vein, but you get the idea. Access to original documents continues to have high value for historians and scholars working in all periods. While digitization is a good idea, it can never replace reading the originals or having access to original documents. Maintaining access to original primary sources cannot be given a "back seat" by making digitization the highest value in a document that projects NARA's future.