Preserving the past is also about planning for the future

Physical archivists will continue to matter

British House of Commons has given notice to change the paper that British law is written on Picture: Getty

Last week, the British House of Commons gave 30 days’ notice to a thousand-year-old tradition. The services of William Cowley, who has supplied the animal-skin parchment onto which British laws are written, will no longer be needed. New laws will be printed on archive-quality paper, rather than the stretched and treated animal skins that have been the medium for important documents for a millennium and a half (at least).

It’s estimated that the ...