The electronic age

Being one of the many people affected by the recent black out in the south west, it made me think about a few things. While we are pushing for more collections and information to be presented digitally, we must try to keep the physical collections for as long as we can. Even as digital storage keeps getting cheaper, meaning that you can have multiple backup copies of a collection, you still cannot access them without power. And thinking that you can still use your smartphones, the Verizon network was down for a couple of hours after the blackout started. I could not even send a text message. I know the AT&T network was also jammed with users (though it was still working), that trying to use the internet was slowed down.