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Digital information is indispensable to contemporary commerce, culture, science, and education. No future understanding of a prior time in the digital age is possible without proactive preservation of our digital heritage. But how can one know whether or not that preservation has been effective? There are two primary assessments of digital preservation efficacy: trustworthiness of managerial systems and programs, and successful use of preserved resources. The first has received extensive treatment in the literature, but the second has been little investigated. This stems from a too narrow conceptualization of the preservation domain as synonymous with data management. Given that the goal of that management is to facilitate future use, and that use is inherently contingent with respect to time, place, person, and purpose, digital preservation should be seen more broadly as facilitating human communication across time. My research asks what measures can meaningful evaluate the efficacy of such communicative acts. It proposes a communicological theory in which success is evaluated with regard to situational verisimilitude. Evaluation metrics are derived from a semiotic-phenomenological model of preservation-enabled communication and the affordances supported by preserved digital resources. This work contributes new conceptual clarity to the theory and practice of digital preservation, a more rigorous basis for demarcating the limits of preservation efficacy, and a more nuanced means of stating, measuring, and evaluating intentions, expectations, and outcomes.