Re: [ARSCLIST] Preservation media WAS: Cataloguing still :-)

[Mwcpc6@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 9/2/2006 11:21:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
At 10:13 AM 9/2/2006, Mike Csontos Mwcpc6@xxxxxxx wrote:

>To me, the long term archiving by digitization of books is just as
>questionable as it is for images and audio.

Mike,

What would you propose as the alternative?

I think you'll agree that regular cloning of analog tapes will degrade 
quality.

I would like to suggest that the effective life of an analog tape is, 
with luck, on average 50 years, although it seems the _design_ life 
(of at least some brands) might have been less.
********************

I don't know of an alternative, but think there should be.

We know media life can be greater than 50 years because examples exist. Also, 
cloning can be very high quality, possibly better than digitization at the 
present state of the art.

The archivist community may be able to improve things by:

1.) Sponsoring research toward developing truly archival media, analog and 
digital, and testing and publishing the results of tests of the archival 
qualities of media.

2.) Establishing standards and criteria for the content to be archived The 
automatic bulk archiving of the content generated by millions of amateur web 
publishers is likely to be counterproductive. The result may be "official" 
archives. An example would be the 100 year old motion picture material preserved by 
the copyright requirement for paper prints.

3.) Loosening of the restrictions on redistribution of archival material. It 
should be possible to share content once the creators and all those who might 
have heard or seen the original are dead. Preservation by distribution is 
somewhat of an alternative.

Who is working on this?

Mike Csontos