Writ on water? An exploration of the gap between archival construct and practice in the machine-readable environment

The late twentieth century explosion of electronic record-keeping media poses new and compelling challenges. These new challenges arise from the increasing complexity of the technology of documentation, and from the increasing fragility of that technology over time. Challenges posed by changes in the collection, dissemination and storage of information and records are covered, and an overview of currently proposed approaches to appraising, storing and preserving the new media is provided.