The best way to archive data long term is to make diverse copies. The easiest way to make diverse copies is to simply make them available to download off of the internet. Don't restrict it to "reading rooms".
Take one of Ray Charles' records..
Is it just the music itself? Does it include the physical media and its condition? If the media has deteriorated, how does that affect it?
Does it include the cover art? Does it include the liner notes? Does it include the notes through the production process?
For the recording of a live performance, does it include the recording equipment and the venue? Does it include the audience reaction?
Does it include documenting everyone who performed backup vocals, accompanied via instruments, produced it, and the label itself?
While normal listeners (99.9% of the public) would stop at the music, the audiophiles will want to understand the physical media and performance conditions, and the researchers/archivists want everything because it's a snapshot of a particular work at a particular time & place via particular means.
But part of your comment is spot on.. diverse sources. It's not feasible for one Library to digitize absolutely everything in the world (or a country), so we participated in an exchange with a bunch (20? not sure anymore) of other libraries, museums, etc who could digitize their own collections and then we could all share them at scale with as little DRM as possible.
Think of it as Napster for libraries. I advocated for no DRM (especially for old, out of production works) but that's why we butted heads with the RIAA.
> the audiophiles will need to understand the physical media and performance conditions,
They really don't :-)
> and the researchers/archivists want everything because it's a snapshot of a particular work at a particular place in time via particular means
Phooey. There are far more interesting things that need archiving.
I once put all my photos through JPEG2 compression, because I thought saving space was a good idea... I've regretted it ever since.
The function of an archive is to preserve artifacts of the past with as much fidelity and context as possible. You can't possibly know what is going to be important to people in the future. Saving 2 cents on storage per century could be the equivalent of using shorter dates/times to save memory, the tradeoff that lead to the Y2K and Y2.038k problems.
Because in theory they already have everything:
"Mandatory deposit (17 U.S.C. section 407) requires the owner of copyright or of the exclusive right of distribution to deposit in the U.S. Copyright Office for the use of the Library of Congress two complete copies of the best edition within 3 months after a work is published. Copies of all works under copyright protection that have been published or distributed in the United States must be deposited with the Copyright Office within 3 months of the date of first publication."
Ref: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/mandatory_deposit.html
And final tidbit from me on this.. Yes, they get submissions of all forms of copyrighted material which means they have a pornography collection. When I was there, that group was down the hall and the lead person was a kind old lady that I chatted with every day for months before she revealed her area of focus. It was.. odd.
But the choice remains:
1. archive in as agonizingly irrelevant detail as technically possible
2. archive as much as possible before it decays irretrievably
Can't have both.
They've also mentioned that always knowing the exact technical setup can help track down problems, which reduces the chances of loss as things are archived down the road.
Similarly, other historic audio recordings might contain forensic clues outside the ranges of human hearing that will be useful to future historians.
Finally, storing lossless formats makes sense for an archive, because raw bits are likely to be easier to recover if knowledge is lost, and localized damage to the data will result in only localized damage of the output.
But I also know of the HP archives that burned down while awaiting funding for a pixel perfect proper archiving of it. The result was there's nothing left for future historians.
The Vatican Library is another. It's full of one-of-a-kind documents. They can't afford to do a pixel perfect archive of them, so nothing gets done. It's all at huge risk of fire.
An imperfect copy is infinitely better than ashes.
The medium is the message. (h/t Marshall McLuhan)
The interaction between tools, artists, and expression is endlessly fascinating.
The guy was working in a pretty important national archive, on what sounds like are rare or one-of a kind artifacts. Archives aren't just about preservation, but preservation in a way that allows research to be performed. Research will likely need high quality copies of good provenience, and all the record-keeping could help explain some phenomenon that was introduced during the digitization process.
So, if they just did a quick an dirty rip of as much stuff as they could, they could probably "preserve" more, but that data might be useless to some future research project after the original has degraded into uselessness.
And in any case, my bet is most well-preserved physical objects (at least paper ones) will long outlast any digital copies that are made today.