FUTURE HERITAGE, OUR LEGACY

People used to believe (and many still do) that digital formats were the ultimate formats for storing information indefinitely. The idea that texts, images and more in general data can be perpetuated by converting them into digital form is popular and widely supported. As a result, a significant amount of our documents and data relies on digital technology. But is digital technology really suitable for long-term preservation? And are electronic devices, which are required in order to access information stored in digital formats, durable enough to guarantee future access to this information? If not, what can we do to overcome this problem? Of course, we cannot preserve everything; there are products and content that will not necessarily reach future generations. Perhaps we should devote some time to choosing what should be destroyed/ recycled. This challenge involves many different aspects: technological, organisational, legal, economic and more. At the same time we cannot forget some more specific aspects such as the requested period of archival time and the typology of digital objects and the accuracy we want to preserve. The present contribution will adequately take into account these aspects and draw some guidelines in order to help facing this problem