Thoughts on libraries best put in context by my professor David Bawden

"Library and Information Sciences are defined by:
-the services which they provide
-the collection which they maintain
-the places and spaces in which they operate
-a managed and organised collection of information resources, of all kinds, with services provided so that the collections can be used effectively within physical and virtual spaces."

"A digital library is deliberately similar:
A managed and organised collection of information resources preserved for a long time with associated user service, where the information is stored in digital format and accessed over a computer network.
The digital world invites transience, but it also persists by nature.  It also implies connectivity.
A digital library also decays."
Example: Pharmaceutical industry needs to keep ORIGINAL data FOREVER when they get FDA approval.  This means they also have to keep all machines and archiving systems that tha tinformation requires for viewing as the regulators INSIST ON IT, as they need access to the ORIGINAL data.  If you switch over systems in the library it is no longer original data.  So a librarians job becomes saving and archiving equipment, hardware and software as well as the data in its original format.

The current laws say that if a document doesn't come directly from your comuter it is not the original.  But some things live across 'borders' or on several computers. So this all sounds wholly unreasonable to me, particularly in light of the fact that so many documents today are being created on shared platforms across the world.