IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v63y2012i11p2153-2164.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An ethical perspective on political‐economic issues in the long‐term preservation of digital heritage

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Johan Lor
  • J.J. Britz

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the main ethical and associated political‐economic aspects of the preservation of born‐digital content and the digitization of analogue content for purposes of preservation. The term “heritage” is used broadly to include scientific and scholarly publications and data. Although the preservation of heritage is generally seen as inherently “good,” this activity implies the exercise of difficult moral choices. The ethical complexity of the preservation of digital heritage is illustrated by means of two hypothetical cases. The first deals with the harvesting and preservation in a wealthy country of political websites originating in a less affluent country. The second deals with a project initiated by a wealthy country to digitize the cultural heritage of a less affluent country. The ethical reflection that follows is structured within the framework of social justice and a set of information rights that are identified as corollaries of generally recognized human rights. The main moral agents, that is, the parties that have an interest, and may be entitled to exercise rights, in relation to digital preservation, are identified. The responsibilities that those who preserve digital content have toward these parties, and the political‐economic considerations that arise, are then analyzed.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Johan Lor & J.J. Britz, 2012. "An ethical perspective on political‐economic issues in the long‐term preservation of digital heritage," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(11), pages 2153-2164, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:11:p:2153-2164
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.22725
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22725
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.22725?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:11:p:2153-2164. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.