Your house contains all kinds of family records that you may imagine you are going to leave to your grandchildren, and theirs, and so on into posterity forever. Sunlight is imperceptibly fading the family photographs on your piano. High temperature and humidity levels in your attic and basement are destroying the photo negatives, love letters, and newspaper clippings you have stored there. You do not see the effects until one day the picture images look like ghosts, letters break where they have been folded and refolded, and newspaper clippings crumble in your hand.
Technological obsolescence is even more threatening.
The computer age has raised the preservation problem to a mind-boggling new level. Even if your system lasted more than ten years, your electronic records probably would not. What is happening to your records and the technology needed to access them is happening to the records of your country, your culture, and much of the world. At risk are enormously important records that individuals need to document their rights and entitlements, that governments need to conduct public business, that citizens of a democracy need to hold officials accountable, and that scholars need to write accurate history. The archival facilities of the National Archives and Records Administration collectively hold literally thousands of audio and visual records, many of them in formats already obsolete.