research, photographs,
art and music are part
of what is regarded as
important. The message of the value of
these works seems to
be getting out to the
general public. In popular culture today we
witness examples from
the recent past that
may prove instructive
to us about our future.
In the 2014 movie
Monuments Men, the
character Frank Stokes
states, “You can wipe
out an entire generation, you can burn their
homes to the ground
and somehow they’ll
still find their way back.
But if you destroy their
history, you destroy
their achievements and
it’s as if they never
existed.” This dialog
echoes the future value
in digital-born media.
As valuable as digitalborn media can be, we
need to remember it is
also inherently fragile
with a short shelf life.
This became evident
when my editor and
I began research on
George Lambert, a two
time Olympic medalist and WWII veteran.
Born in a small, Iowa
town in the United
States he passed away
in Wisconsin, US in
39
2012. Few people with
whom we discussed
Lambert knew of his
accomplishments. In
fact, the Preservation
Society for his home
county had no records
of his achievements.
We conducted our original research by looking at his online obituary. On the first visit
to the obit, everything
seemed fine and neither of us had thought