William Kilbride discusses the ways in which digital preservation is a constantly emerging challenge. Just as we think we have solved it, some new technology or tool comes along, sending us back to the drawing board. For digital preservation, technological innovation is not only the cause of our anxieties but also the promise of a solution, because when we return to the drawing board it is due to some new tool or technique that has become available to us, and which improves, in some small way, our ability to tackle the underlying problem of obsolescence and documentation. We well understand the need to renew the technical infrastructure, and we’ve grown to expect rapid innovation and prototyping. Everything is always in beta. We’re also used to the idea of a community: that one does not simply procure a product but increasingly one procures a community as well. But perhaps we are less well adapted to the social and organizational change that this implies. How do we renew and adapt the social infrastructure which surrounds digital preservation, and what does this mean for us as a community?

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