The only effective answer will be for the publishers to produce materials designed for longevity in the first place, such as being richly tagged in SGML, an international standard for manuscript markup. Adding new tools only becomes possible if the material was richly marked up in the first place, which is certainly not the case for material stored in PDF or PostScript formats. On the time scale of decades, the standards for marking up electronic materials will be likely to change to take advantage of the new tools. As the standards evolve, the historical material which can be translated into the new standard will stay alive. The material which is not richly marked up will disappear from view - swept into the dustbin of history and lost to future generations.
Translation can be easy if planned for.
The AAS has reconstituted its entire public offering of the eApJL several times during the first nine months of operation, each time adding new capability. Publishers will have to be part of the electronic archiving process, and consumers of electronic publications should shun publishers who will not step up to their responsibility to help maintain the archive. Conclusions We can extend our experience to the broader community. The lessons we are learning in astronomy are showing us the way the future will be, if we are smart enough to pay attention. We have a powerful set of tools at our disposal.