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[ARSCLIST] huge number of links on digital preservation



Hello all,

(Please forgive cross postings.) After reading Mikes reply to my How CD's and DVD's can fail article, I've been doing extensive research into CD and DVD media which lead me into studying digital data archiving. I'm going to be modifying my article to correct some of the errors Mike pointed out. The field is so broad, my head is spinning. The one conclusion I came to is that, to really preserve digital data, takes lots of technology and manpower and planning. One document I read, either from the British Library or the British Archives (can't remember which) cited a digital mass storage system that they have. They ingest enormous quantities of data. I saw a chart which estimated their average cost of maintaining the system and administration over 5 years to be close to 9 EUROS PER GIGABYTE! That translates to $12.12 at the current exchange rate. This is an astounding cost. This means the cost of archiving the data from a standard DVD movie, 4.7 GB, for 5 years, would be 42.3 Euros or $56.97 at the current exchange rate! It would be cheaper to just buy a couple of movies from the publisher every 5 years. Of course, with most digital data, you don't have that luxury. Anyway, this cost factor really surprised me, considering the almost negligible cost of the storage media itself. I also saw a proposal for a data storage system for audio visual materials for an agency affiliated with the US National Archives which is planning to ingest, get this, 23 TERABYTES PER DAY! That's 23,000 GB / day. So, combining these two figures, it would seem that this US agency would need to budget $12.12 * 23,000 = $278,760 / day to cover their 5 year data storage costs. This works out to about $99 Million / year. That sure sounds like a lot to me. In your experience, does that sound correct?

Anyway, I've uncovered and saved dozens of links, and I'll probably share some once I've had more of a chance to assimilate them. I've included 4 of the best I've found below. This one site has hundreds of links to resources on digital archiving. Enjoy.

http://www.dlib.org/about.html - D-Lib Magazine
http://www.dlib.org/title-index.html
http://www.dlib.org/title-index2.html
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/rosenthal/11rosenthal.html

Sincerely,

Ron

------------------------------
Ron Frazier -- P.O. Box 2284 -- Cumming, GA 30028 -- 770-205-9422 (O)
Email: rwfrazier AT macdatasecurity DOT com (replace the AT and DOT by hand)
I am an independent consultant interested in exploring ways to archive data over long periods of time.
Recordable DVD's & CD's can fail in relatively few years. Don't let that happen to YOUR data.
Get your GOLD Archival Grade DVD's & CD's from http://macdatasecurity.com/ today!
http://c3energy.com/ --- http://c3energy.com/alt_energy/
http://c3energy.com/computersecurity/ --- http://c3energy.com/health/



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