How will science historians cope in the digital age?

WSJ.com : In a vault beneath the British Library , Jeremy Leighton John, the library’s first curator of eManuscripts , grapples with a formidable historical challenge.How to archive the deluge of computer data swamping scientists so that future generations can authenticate today’s discoveries and better understand the people who made them.His task is only getting harder: Scientists who collaborate via e-mail, Google, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook are leaving fewer paper trails, while the information technologies that do document their accomplishments can be incomprehensible to other researchers and historians trying to read them.Computer-intensive experiments and the software used to analyze their output generate millions of gigabytes of data that are stored or retrieved by electronic systems that quickly become obsolete."It would be tragic if there were no record of lives that were so influential,” John says. Related Link The future of saving our past Nature