Digital Preservation: A Critical Vocabulary is an edited volume under contract with MIT Press. Throughout 2024 and early 2025 this site is being used to host draft chapters of the forthcoming book for open review. If you would like to provide feedback on the book, you can do so by signing for a PubPub account and then posting comments on individual chapters.
Background on the project
Words have power. Words shape how we see and understand things. When it comes to computing and disciplines dependent on computing the power of words becomes even more concrete. Through programming languages and the development of systems, words directly and literally are enacted. Words become executable. As software increasingly structures and shapes our world it is quite literally the case that software takes command. As more and more of the cultural record is born digital, or is digitized for the purposes of preservation and access, seemingly pedantic differences in technical language become places where slippage of terms can have a huge impact on the future of the past. Given this, it becomes increasingly important to critically interrogate and explore the meanings of keywords in digital preservation practice.
For more background and context on the project you can read the draft introduction chapter.
