I’m interested in discussing challenges regarding the preservation and discovery of academic works created in new media, or as the result of “digital humanities” endeavors.  More specifically, examining the significance, analysis and preservation of the contextuality of digital works.

A simple example would be the intermingling of a digital video made from a VHS, with videos that were “born” digital in an institutional repository (IR).  In this context, a comparison of a works image or sound quality with works  “born in” in different states, but now stored in the same state may be misleading if the original context of the videos aren’t clearly communicated or factored in.  A more signficant example could be a group of multimedia presentations by students aggregated on a class web site created by the faculty member (or the students themselves for that matter).   If we move those presentations to an IR for preservation, how much is lost in losing the contextual framework of the class web site?

Key Questions to explore could be:

• Does context matter more with new/digital media as compared to historic textual communication models?
• If so is there a conceptual framework for deciding when it matters?
• How do we go about preserving these frameworks as metadata or by other methods?
• How do we educate creators and consumer?