Talked with a librarian at the central branch about repairing 19th century ledgers and she said 'we're not preserving the object, we're preserving the access.' Kinda blew my mind.

3 comments

3 Comments

That's a really sharp way to put it. It shifts the goal from keeping a thing on a shelf to making sure the info inside it stays usable. Makes you wonder how many other fields could use that same mindset.

hall.charles4h ago

Yeah, the "shifts the goal" part is what gets me. It's not just about other fields, it's about the basic stuff we own. Like, I bought a smart light bulb last year and the company went under. Now the app doesn't work, so it's just a dumb bulb. I paid for a smart thing but only bought the hardware. The useful part was the software, and that's gone. Makes you look at every purchase differently.

the_seth27d ago

Software licensing is a perfect example of this.