SUSTAINABILITY & PRESERVATION
The Clamor Archive Project faces medium-term risk management challenges primarily in the file formats we will be using to represent the images of the layout of the magazine. Because CAP will work directly with the digital files used to create the print magazine as the basis for the digitization of the collection, we have the luxury of choosing multiple formats for future preservation. This will allow us to “hedge our bets,” so to speak, on the future accessibility of our preserved documents by preserving PDF, TIFF, and JPEG surrogates of each article in the magazine to complement the full-text. Uncompressed PDFs will be used to retain as much press-quality data from the articles in the event that high-resolution reprinting of certain articles can be accomplished, if necessary, in the future. These press-quality PDFs embed fonts, images, and other graphic elements so they may be read or printed in the future without reliance on multiple proprietary software applications (i.e. Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator).
Long-term risks for this project present significant challenges. Were this a project initiated and sustained by a larger organization, more attention toward the long-term sustainability of the project would be possible. However, without substantial committed institutional support (short- and long-term), CAP will have to rely on the volatile “faith-based” assumption that stakeholders will consider and implement the necessary steps for ensuring the project’s longevity (adapting to changing technology standards and changing user needs).
CAP has, from conception, been proposed as a complement (not a replacement) to the print archives of the magazine currently maintained in subscribing libraries nationwide that have made Clamor accessible to patrons. Additionally, we envision this digital collection as a complement to the full-text archiving done with ProQuest’s AltPress Watch database. In doing so, we see this project as “one of many options” described by Lavioe and Dempsey. As mentioned in our project introduction, we propose preserving the articles and related ephemeral print materials associated with the magazine, to provide future scholars, magazine publishers, and students with a resource for not only examining the articles and design of the magazine, but also the peripheral materials that are integral to the publishing of the magazine.