Josh’s recent (and really good) post examines the impact that Web 2.0 and the consequences of a “web as application” for digital preservationists. Ultimately, Josh is concerned that it has become increasingly difficult for digital preservationists to archive the “end user experience” of a web that has moved quickly away from static documents and more toward interactive applications.
I agree that, as Josh says, it is difficult to preserve the way bloggers display their Flickr photos in the sidebar, but that end user experience is just as difficult to preserve as any other end user experience with countless other media preserved for centuries. It is easy to preserve a colonial American pamphlet or newspaper criticizing George III or the Stamp Act, but its impossible to preserve how colonists experienced that newspaper or pamphlet. Sure, we can preserve the actual newspaper, the physical document itself, but that’s only one part of the user experience. Other elements include where it was used, how it was used, how users “interacted” with the document, how it was shared or passed around, how it was read (outloud or to one’s self).
Similarly, even though it is easy to preserve the physical document, it is more difficult for people to gain access to study that document. Archives are (rightly so) very cautious with who has access to their holdings. The average person off the street would have a difficult time looking directly at the actual, original papers of Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin. Thus, not only is it difficult to preserve how people in the past interacted with the document, it is also difficult for most people today to interact with the real, physical document itself.
It seems to me (and I mentioned this in one of my comments on his site) that Web 2.0 is breaking down the hierarchy that has traditionally accompanied archiving and preservation. Web 2.0 has encouraged individual users to become their own preservationists, and to share their mini “archives” with others. And, though it might be difficult to archive how users interacted with digital content, it is no more difficult than archiving the interaction with other media in the past.