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Abstract:

Maintenance will be critical to digital libraries, especially
those that promote broad access to diverse, informal
materials. If ignored, maintenance issues within the
digital library -- especially those relating to its materials --
will threaten its usefulness and even its long-term
viability.
We perceive the maintenance problem to be both technical
and institutional, and this paper considers the maintenance
of the digital library as both institution and technology.
The paper examines collection maintenance from several
vantage points, including software architecture and the
type of collection, arguing that digital libraries that contain
informal and dynamic material will have substantially
greater maintenance problems. The paper ends with an
examination of potential technical solutions.