Since 1989, she has been involved in a continuing series of research and production projects centering on the use of digital imaging for preservation reformatting and enhanced access. Ms. Kenney is a fellow and past president of the Society of American Archivists. At present, it is impossible to guarantee the longevity and legibility of digital information for even one human generation. One such solution, the development of emulators, would enable access to information created with software and hardware that has become obsolete. The merits of emulation are widely debated, and the approach has yet to be developed for broad, practical use.
Migration is, in essence, a translation.
With migration, as with all translations, some information is lost, no matter how skilled the interpreter. In migration, it is usually the context, rather than the data, that drops out or is improperly reconstructed in the new code. This can be crippling in dynamic formats, in relational databases, and even in simple spreadsheets. Nonetheless, given how much information already exists in digital form and the brevity of its projected life span, institutions must act now to move information forward. They cannot afford to wait for the optimal solution.