For each work, establish what readers need in order to perceive the authors’ intellectual and rhetorical contributions, acknowledging that the current form of the publication may not be available in the future with changing technologies and social frameworks. Preservation efforts should focus on these core components. Many publishers will define the rules about what is preserved at a platform level with a single model across multiple publications. It is important for authors and publishers to work together to understand the core components, and ensure that they are represented in the content that will be preserved.
These guidelines refer to preservation of core components:
70. Consider tagging material that should be included or excluded for preservation
71. Share documentation about what will be preserved at a platform level
Architecture & Memory, written by Robert Kirkbride and published by Columbia University Press in 2008, was an early enhanced digital book. It used videos of architectural features and included an interactive navigation feature that utilized Adobe Flash—a now obsolete technology that was popular in the early web. When browsers stopped supporting Flash, the videos and interactive menu stopped working. The publication was migrated to the Fulcrum platform around the same time. From an outside perspective, the interactive navigation component could be viewed as a secondary form of navigation after the standard browsable menu, which was composed of hyperlinks and still worked. A conversation with the author, however, revealed that the interactive navigation feature was critical to the work. The publisher worked with the author to recreate the interactive Flash component using HTML5. If the author had not been available to advocate for the importance of this feature, the publication would have lost a critical component.
During early conversations related to preserving Vulci: Urban Context and Waterscapes, the publisher was contemplating how to include a representation of the 3D visualizations referenced in the publication. They were stored in a third-party platform that specialized in supporting these visualizations. Discussion was had with the author to identify whether the 3D visualizations were integral to the research contribution and narrative of the book or whether the book could stand alone. It was decided to develop the manuscript so that the book could be independent of the features thereby saving investment of time and money in preserving features which were nice-to-have rather than essential.