The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a Digital data form.[NDIIPP, "Preserving Digital Culture," Library of Congress.] This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog recording materials become Digital data, as in the case of files created by scanning physical paper records.[Susan S. Lazinger, "Issues of Policy and Practice in Digital Preservation," in Digital Libraries: Policy, Planning, and Practice, ed. Judith Andrews and Derek Law (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 100]
Discrepancies in definition
There exists some inconsistency in defining born-digital materials. Some believe such materials must exist in digital form exclusively; in other words, if they can be transferred into a physical, analog form, they are not truly born-digital.
[ "Introduction - Definitions and Concepts," Digital Preservation Coalition.] However, others maintain that while these materials will often not have a subsequent physical counterpart, having one does not bar them from being classified as 'born-digital'.
For instance, Mahesh and Mittal identify two types of born-digital content, "exclusive digital" and "digital for print", allowing for a broader base of classification than the former definition provides.
[G. Mahesh and Rekha Mittal, "Digital Content Creation and Copyright Issues," The Electronic Library 27, no 4 (2008), 678.]
Furthermore, it has been pointed out that certain works may incorporate components that are both born-digital and digitized, further blurring the lines between what should and should not be considered 'born-digital.' For example, a digital video created may utilize historical film footage that has been converted.[Amy Friedlander, "Summary of Findings" in Building a National Strategy for Digital Preservation: Issues in Digital Media Archiving, Council on Library and Information Resources and Library of Congress, 2.] It is important to be aware of these discrepancies when thinking about born-digital materials and the effects they have. However, some universals do exist across these definitions. All make clear the fact that born-digital media must originate digitally. Also, they agree that this media must be able to be utilized in a digital form (whether exclusively or otherwise), while they do not have to exist or be used as analog materials.
Etymology
The term "born digital" is of uncertain origin. While it may have occurred to multiple people at various times, it was coined independently by web developer Randel (Rafi) Metz in 1993, who acquired the domain name "borndigital.com" then and sustained it as a personal website for 18 years until 2011. The domain is now owned by a web developer in New Zealand. The original website is
archived here.
Examples of born-digital content
Grey literature and communications
Much of the
grey literature that exists today are almost entirely conducted online, due in part to the accessibility and speed of internet communications.
As the products of the vast amount of information created by organizations and individuals on computers, data sets and electronic records must exist in the context of other activities.
[Kenneth Thilbodeau, "Building the Archives of the Future," D-Lib Magazine 7, no. 2 (February 2001).] Common content includes:
-
Email
-
Documents created in and/or observed in viewers.
-
-
Presentations
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Electronic medical records
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Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit have originated in the networked world, and are therefore born-digital by default.
Digital photography
Digital photography has allowed larger groups of people to participate in the process, art form, and pastime of photography. With the advent of digital cameras in the late 1980s, followed by the invention and dissemination of
Camera phone, sales of digital cameras eventually surpassed that of analog cameras.
The early to mid 2000s saw the rise of photo storage websites, such as
Flickr and
Photobucket, and social media websites dedicated primarily to sharing digital photographs, including
Instagram,
Pinterest,
Imgur, and
Tumblr. Digital image files include Joint Photographic Experts Group (
JPEG), Tagged Image File Format (
TIFF), Portable Network Graphics (PNG), Graphic Interchange Format (
GIF), and raw image format.
Digital art
Digital art is an umbrella term for art created with a computer. Types include visual media, digital animation, computer-aided design, 3D models and
interactive art.
Webcomics, comics published primarily on the internet, are an example of exclusively born-digital art. Webcomics follow the tradition of user-generated content and may later be printed by the creator, but as they were originally disseminated through the internet, they are considered to be born-digital media. Many webcomics are published on existing social media websites, while others use webcomic-specific platforms or their own domains.
Electronic books
are books that can be read through the digital screens of computers, smartphones, or
E-reader.
[Gardiner, Eileen and Ronald G. Musto. "The Electronic Book." In Suarez, Michael Felix, and H. R. Woudhuysen. The Oxford Companion to the Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 164.] The e-book sector of the book industry has flourished in recent years, with increasing numbers of e-books and e-book readers being developed and sold.
E-publishing is particularly favorable to independent authors, because the digital marketplace creates a more direct connection between authors, their works, and the audience.
[Romano, "E-Books," 31.] Some publishing houses, including major ones such as Harlequin, have formed imprints for digital-only books in response to this trend.
[Sarah Weinman, "Harlequin launches digital-only imprint. Will other big houses feel the romance?" Daily Finance, (November 10, 2009).] Publishers also offer digital-exclusive publications for use on e-book readers, such as the
Amazon Kindle. One example of this was with the simultaneous launch of Amazon's Kindle 2 with the Stephen King novelette
Ur.
In recent years, however, the sale of e-books from traditional publishers has decreased, due in part to increasing prices.
[Romano, Frank. " E-Books and the Challenge of Preservation." Building a National Strategy for Digital Preservation: Issues in Digital Media Archiving. April 2002. Pg. 28]
Video recordings
Videos that are born-digital vary in type and usage.
Vlog, an amalgamation of "video" and "blog," are streamed and consumed on video-sharing websites such as
YouTube.
Similarly, a web series is a television-like show that is shown exclusively and/or initially on the internet. This does not include the streaming of pre-existing traditional television shows. Examples include Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, The Guild, and The Twilight Zone (2019).
Sound recordings
Digital sound recordings have played a role since the 1970s with the acceptance of pulse-code modulation (PCM) in the recording process.
[Samuel Brylawski, "Preservation of Digitally Recorded Sound" in Building a National Strategy for Digital Preservation: Issues in Digital Media Archiving, Council on Library and Information Resources and Library of Congress, 53.] Since then, numerous means of storing and delivering digital audio have been developed, including
Streaming media,
compact discs and mp3 audio files.
Increasingly, digital audio are only available via
download, lacking any kind of tangible counterpart. One example of this trend is the 2008 recording of Hector Berlioz's
Symphonie fantastique by Los Angeles Philharmonic under
Gustavo Dudamel.
[D.J. Hoek, "The Download Dilemma," American Libraries (August/September 2009), 55.] Available through download only, it has presented problems for
libraries which may want to carry this work but cannot due to
licensing limitations.
Another example is
Radiohead 2007 release
In Rainbows, released initially as a digital download.
[Jon Pareles (9 December 2007). "Pay What You Want for This Article". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 December 2007]
The music industry has changed dramatically with the increase in digital music, specifically Music download. The digital format and consumers' growing comfort with it has led to rising sales in single tracks. This growth is clearly still underway, with all of the ten best-selling singles since 2000 having been released since 2007.[ "What Musical Artists are Winning in this Digital Decade?" USA Today (December 8, 2009).] This does not necessarily signal the demise of CDs, as they are still more popular than digital albums, but it does show that this changing born-digital content is having a significant influence on sales and the industry.
Other media
WebExhibits are websites that act as virtual museums for any variety of content. These often use both primary and secondary historical sources, maps, timelines, infographics, and other data visualizations to showcase the historical past. One example is
Clio Visualizing History's
Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution, a web exhibit about the American women's movement from the 1940s to the present. Clio Visualizing History was founded by Lola Van Wagenen in 1996 to meet the growing need for innovative history projects in multi-media platforms.
Journalism
As existing print publications migrated to born-digital releases, digital native news websites such as
HuffPost and
BuzzFeed News have grown substantially.
This trend toward web-exclusive content has seen the rise of "news applications," or news articles built with interactive features that cannot be replicated on print.
"News Apps" are often heavily
Data journalism, using interactive graphics custom-built for the story by a team of software specialists in addition to the core group of writers and editors.
Examples include
Baltimore Homicides from
The Baltimore Sun,
Do No Harm from the
Las Vegas Sun, and
Snow Fall from The New York Times, which took a team of more than fifteen journalists, web developers, and designers to build.
Key issues
Preservation
Digital preservation involves the conservation and maintenance of digital content. As with other
, preservation must be a continuous and regular undertaking, as these materials do not show the same signs of degradation that print and other physical materials do. Invisible processes such as
Data degradation can lead to irreparable damage.
[NDIIPP et al., "International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation," 5.] In the case of born-digital content, deterioration can occur in the form of
Data degradation, a process in which digital files degrade over time, and
link rot, a process in which URLs link to pages on the internet that are no longer available.
Incompatibility is also a concern, in regard to the eventual obsolescence of both hardware and software capable of making sense of the documents.
Many questions arise regarding what should be archived and preserved and who should undertake the job. Vast amounts of born-digital content are created constantly and institutions are forced to decide what and how much should be saved. Because
Hyperlink plays such a large role in the digital setting, whether a responsibility exists to maintain access to
Hyperlink (and therefore context) is debated, especially when considering the scope of such a task.
[Lyman, "World Wide Web," 41.] Additionally, since publishing is not as delineated in the digital realm and preliminary versions of work are increasingly made available, knowing when to archive presents further complications.
[Richard A. Danner, "Issues in the Preservation of Born-digital Scholarly Communications in Law," Law Library Journal 96, no. 4 (2004), 601.]
Relevance and accessibility
For digital libraries and repositories that are used as reference materials, such as
PBS LearningMedia, which provides educational resources for teachers, staying relevance is of utmost importance.
The information must be factually accurate and include context,
while staying current to the website's main goals. As in the case of preservation, bit rot, link rot, and incompatibility negatively affect how users might access born-digital records, while mere functionality, e.g. video quality and legibility of any text, is also a concern. Additionally, considerations on how digital content can be inclusive of people with disabilities should be made, particularly in conjunction with assistive technologies such as
,
, and speech-to-text software. Access is also affected by licensing laws — the lack of
ownership of their digital collections leaves libraries with nothing when their license expires, despite the costs already paid.
[Victor F. Calaba, "Quibbles 'n Bits: Making a Digital First Sale Doctrine Feasible," Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review 9, no. 1 (2002), 23-5]
Licensing
Laws created to protect the intellectual property were written for
Analog recording works; as such, provisions such as the first-sale doctrine of US copyright law, which enables libraries to lend materials to patrons, have not been applied to the digital realm.
[NDIIPP et al., "International," 154.][Lyman, "World Wide Web," 44.] Therefore, certain
digital content that is
licensed rather than owned, as is common with many digital materials, is often of limited use since it cannot be transmitted to patrons at various
or lent through an
interloan agreement. However, with regards to the preservation functions of libraries and
archives and the subsequent need to make copies of born-digital materials, the laws of many countries have been changing, allowing for agreements to be made between these institutions and the rights holders of born-digital content.
Consumer have also had to deal with intellectual property as it concerns their ownership of and ability to control the born-digital material that they buy. Piracy proves to be a bigger problem with digital objects, including those that are born-digital, because such materials can be copied and spread in perfect condition with speed and distance on a scale inconceivable for traditional print and physical materials.[Calaba, "Quibbles," 8.] Again, the first-sale doctrine, which, from a consumer standpoint, allows purchasers of materials to sell or give away items (such as books and Compact disc), is not yet applied effectively to digital objects. Three reasons for this have been identified by Victor Calaba: "...first, license agreements imposed by software manufacturers typically prohibit exercise of the first sale doctrine; second, traditional copyright law may not support application of the first sale doctrine to digital works; finally, the functionally prevents users from making copies of digitized works and prohibits the necessary bypassing of access control mechanisms to facilitate a transfer."[Calaba, "Quibbles," 9.]
Increasingly, institutions are more interested in subscribing to digital versions of journals, something observed as some scholarly journals have unbundled their print and electronic editions and allowed for separate subscription; these trends have created questions about the economic sustainability of print publication. Major journals such as the American Chemical Society have made significant changes to their print editions in order to cut costs, and many others predict an exclusively digital future.[John Timmer, "Print, beware! Publishers are "on the road" to pure digital," Ars Technica (August 13, 2009).] The increasing subscription prices and predatory practices of scholarly journals, however, provided impetus for the Open access, which advocates for free, unrestricted access to scholarly papers.
See also
