[Nhcoll-l] Why retain physical specimens

[Alice Cannon]

Another line of argument that may be useful / of interest is that it’s not necessarily cheaper or easier to store digital files than it is to store physical specimens. Digital preservation requires a very ‘active’ and energy-hungry program of migration etc to keep records accessible; whereas with good facilities physical collections can be kept safely relatively ‘passively’ (here’s a short general interest article that describes these issues http://theconversation.com/there-need-not-be-a-digital-dark-age-how-to-save-our-data-for-the-future-37723 and something a bit longer describing the various issues of digital preservation, from D-Lib Magazine http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july16/houghton/07houghton.html and something about the cost of ‘the internet of things’ in general https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/17/internet-climate-carbon-footprint-data-centres).

I’m not aware of any articles that estimate the costs for natural history specimens, but I recently read this interesting blog post attempting to estimate the carbon cost of storing digital archives vs physical archives (and I’m not sure if it includes the cost of cooling server rooms): https://www.history.pcusa.org/blog/2019/09/our-carbon-footprint-archives

The argument to discard the original comes up a lot in film and newspaper preservation too (particularly for cellulose nitrate film, which is highly flammable). Because their primary value is often as an information carrier (for an image or text) and because the original is often seriously deteriorated, it can be hard to defend keeping the original once a copy is made. But many of the arguments already raised here still apply — that copying technologies continually improve, that the experience of viewing or reading the original is different, and that the originals still hold cultural, technological and historical value. I would imagine many natural history specimens also have historical significance because of who they were collected by, and where, and when – and even cultural significance because (perhaps) they were once highly valued by communities (to make food, clothing, tools etc, or for religious reasons) and are now seriously endangered or extinct.

Alice Cannon
Manager, Integrated Collection Processes
Strategic Collection Management
Museums Victoria
PO Box 666 Melbourne VIC 3001 Australia
+61 3 8341 7395
+61 (0) 402 041 064
museumsvictoria.com.au

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