Sustainability

• Metadata is incredibly important when it comes to the sustainability of a collection. Future users need to be able to identify what the objects are, where they came from, how they were digitized, where the originals are stored, etc, etc, etc.
• Preservation of the digital objects is and will be an ongoing problem within the world of digitization. Changing technologies provide better quality and better methods of digitization, but also provide a headache in terms of migrating already digitized objects to upgraded and new technologies. This is my biggest concern and frustration with digitized records. The problem is so overwhelming that it seems futile to even try sometimes! But as librarians we must keep reinventing ourselves and how we can maximize the availability of accessible information for the public.
  
• Money unfortunately is the biggest problem in sustainability. Often times finding funding to get a project off the ground is not difficult, but the continued upkeep of the project once it is digitized is often overlooked by donors who are unaware of the problem. Money also affects the quality of equipment purchased and time spent perfecting the project. I learned firsthand just how much time can be spent on just a few items. When managing thousands of items it's overwhelming to fathom how much more problematic the funding is.
  
• And what about where do we store the original physical objects. Users have the mistaken notion that once something is made available on the web, the original can be done away with. The lifespan of a physical piece of paper far outweighs a digital object or even technology such as a video tape or a dvd. It is because of this that we MUST store these objects in a safe environment for future use if necessary.