Digital technology means that 1) the intern can burn down the entire library of Alexandria with the wrong SQL statement (“what’s ‘where?’”), and 2) we still have no real long-term archival solution for data storage that isn’t prohibitively expensive or subject to non-retrieval due to technology advancement
Consider this: please pull the tape backups? What do you mean we don’t have a tape reader anymore and the tape has all gone bad? What about the archival DVD? They only last 25 years? Surely the Zip drive has it on it? The plastic wore out on the read heads? Is that even a thing? Amazon glacier? No SLA? No, ColeSLA isn’t a funny joke Steve. This is serious. Wait. So, where are the land records from 1870 to establish ownership of the property then?
Digital record preservation is hard and gets a lot harder the longer term you try to do it.
Governments do NOT have the proper time horizons or actual costs of preservation in realistic order or top of mind when they talk about these projects being “cost saving.”
Consider this: please pull the tape backups? What do you mean we don’t have a tape reader anymore and the tape has all gone bad? What about the archival DVD? They only last 25 years? Surely the Zip drive has it on it? The plastic wore out on the read heads? Is that even a thing? Amazon glacier? No SLA? No, ColeSLA isn’t a funny joke Steve. This is serious. Wait. So, where are the land records from 1870 to establish ownership of the property then?
Digital record preservation is hard and gets a lot harder the longer term you try to do it.
Governments do NOT have the proper time horizons or actual costs of preservation in realistic order or top of mind when they talk about these projects being “cost saving.”