  Over the past decades and even centuries, the astronomical community has
accumulated a signif-icant heritage of recorded observations of a great many
astronomical objects. Those records con-tain irreplaceable information about
long-term evolutionary and non-evolutionary changes in our Universe, and their
preservation and digitization is vital. Unfortunately, most of those data risk
becoming degraded and thence totally lost. We hereby call upon the astronomical
community and US funding agencies to recognize the gravity of the situation,
and to commit to an interna-tional preservation and digitization efforts
through comprehensive long-term planning supported by adequate resources,
prioritizing where the expected scientific gains, vulnerability of the
origi-nals and availability of relevant infrastructure so dictates. The
importance and urgency of this issue has been recognized recently by General
Assembly XXX of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in its Resolution
B3: "on preservation, digitization and scientific exploration of his-torical
astronomical data". We outline the rationale of this promotion, provide
examples of new science through successful recovery efforts, and review the
potential losses to science if nothing it done.
