Digital publication doesn’t just look different from print publication, it is by nature less stable. The machines, operating systems, and digital rights management software we use to access e-books are constantly evolving, and so are the things we can do to them, how they were written and edited and encoded, what they hold in terms of media. Just like everything else, all that is digital eventually falls apart. And terms like “bit rot” and “link rot” may not resonate but they should.

If subscription models continue to take off, if libraries continue not to be able to buy permanent access to e-books for their patrons outright, if even the Library of Congress and archival repositories are unable to accession original e-books and save copies for posterity, we could lose something of great value. Imagine if nobody had saved original editions of the Gutenberg Bible or A Canterbury Tale or Don Quixote; how much less would we know about our literary heritage?

BARBARA GALLETLY, “In the Digtal Era, Publication Isn’t Preservation,” Digital Book World, May 17,2012.

see also: “Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing.”

Above: TOM PHILLIPS A Humument