The digital library in 100 years: damage control

This editorial aims to look at damage control for the problems digital libraries will face in 100 years because of choices we make today.

The approach looks at the market choices for archiving systems and considers what factors could cause contemporary choices to go wrong.

The editorial finds that interoperability is the preferred choice for helping to ensure that the wrong choice of an archiving system will have minimal consequences for the documents in that system.

Libraries choosing archiving systems must make choices based on limited information and on expectations about that system's long‐term viability that could well be wrong. This editorial highlights that libraries should prepare for some archiving systems to fail and should plan for interoperability so that documents can move readily from one system to another.