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Failure As Process: Interrogating Disaster, Loss, And Recovery In Digital Preservation, Carly Dearborn, Sam Meister

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Disaster, loss, and failure preoccupy the minds of many digital preservation professionals and yet, despite the prominence of digital disaster planning guidelines which seem to anticipate failure, there is limited discussion of experience with preservation system or network failures, which are often framed as inevitable in digital preservation. Despite this framing, negative perceptions of failure influence the digital preservation discourse by associating failure with poor planning, unreliability, and untrustworthiness on the part of institutions. This article will interrogate the issue of failure within the digital preservation field and consider the need for more conversations around network failure and recovery. The …