Stewardship IV: Stewardship Failures and Transitions

Stewardship institutions can fail, or abdicate parts of their historic mission; further, there are many reasons why stewardship responsibility needs to be transferred from one party to another. This is particularly critical and sensitive for digital information, due to its fragile properties. This talk will include a survey of a number of example drawn from libraries and book collections, the world of art objects, archives, and data collections. It will also include some further discussion of the special role of private collectors in these transitions.