Surveying the Changing Cultural Record

We have become accustomed to talking rather casually about ideas like "archiving the cultural record", yet we have a very poor understanding of what constitutes this record and how it is changing with the continual evolution of information technology. As a result it's difficult to tell how effective our range of cultural memory institutions are, how to set priorities, and where there are needs to develop new public policies. In this discussion, I'll do some initial very high level surveying of what might be considered to constitute the cultural record and briefly discuss some of the stewardship issues.