Storage Devices in Libraries: Why Store Information?

It's amazing to see many of medieval and renaissance documents being kept intact in library archives.  How is this possible?  Libraries have the good reputation of preserving and sharing materials or information.  Originals or copies of both old and new materials are stored and preserved for future reference in libraries.  I came across some old pictures of past American Presidents and many important documents like the constitution while I was searching the Flickr Creative Commons.  Take a look at these:

                                     One-hundred Fiftieth Anniversary of the Constitution, 1941 - 1945.
                                   
                                    Photo belongs to the U.S. National Archives' photostreams (8,042). 
                                     Rights: No known restrictions on publication.
                                     Photo was taken on September 17, 1937.
                              
  

For president, Abraham Lincoln.  For vice president, Hannibal Hamlin (LOC)

Photo belongs to Library of Congress' photostream (14,055)

                                         Rights: No known restrictions on publication.
                                         The photo was taken some time in 1860.
Notes: Prints shows a large campaign banner for Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865. and running mate Hannibal Hamlin. Lincoln's first name is writen here as "Abram." The banner consists of a thirty-three star American flag pattern printed on cloth. A bust portrait of Lincoln is encircled by stars, in the corner of the banner.

Information sharing and safeguiding are the major tasks of libraries; from oral history, down to writing in paper, sound recordings, films, hypertext documents, etc.  Sometimes, I ponder in my heart how numerous full text of articles, journals, and periodicals in general are made possible on the Internet.  Thanks to the invention of magnetic media which serves as a storage system.  It makes digital devices like videos and thousands of other formats possible to access and distribute by placing them on hard drives from where we can download files (transfer directly) to our computers' hard drive or back up in other portable forms of magnetic media.  A practical example is the Respondus LockDown Browser
that was required to be downloaded on our computers in order for us to access Session 1, Term 1 quiz.

                                                        Sources for Monitoring
From ResourceBlog: http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/
An exiting new initiative about the World Wide Web Index was announced by the World Wide Web Fountain on September 18, 2011.  This will be the world's first multi-dimentional measure of the Web and its impact on people in a large number of countries.  According to the news, it will be a composite index, incorporating political, economic, social, and developmental indicators as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure. 

From Lisnews:  http://lisnews.org/
 Do Book Ratings Belong in Library Catalogs?  Blakes expressed his concern over this question.  He said, "to me, it feels like a violation of public library philosophy."  He said further that it is less of a problem to him when rating is average or high because it would encourage patrons to check out books they are already considering.  But when patrons see a low rating on a book in catalogs, especially a rating not attributed to an individual patrons, it seems that the library is bad-mouthing the book.  This of course, he said, discourages rather than promotes literacy.