Photo by wonderferret
Recently, I was looking for a digital file and realized the only place I had stored it was on a zipdisk – which is completely inaccessible from my computers. As a digital archivist, I was cursing myself. I should have known better. If I had only migrated the information to an accessible medium, I lamented. Even so, would the files of yesteryear accurately render using today’s software?
CBS Sunday morning had an excellent story on datarot, outlining the issues of format obsolescence, access and migration issues. And they provided some good advice on the care and feeding of your digital files – migrate to new formats, refresh old media and store media in a cool, dust free location.
A few additional digital curation tips: keep a “hot copy” on an external backup harddrive and (contrary to what most think) do not forget that digital is a fragile medium. Just think of the time you lost all those iTunes songs or vacation photos when your hard drive crashed…!
Call me a heretic, but if the lights go out tomorrow, the only things you will be able to access are the hard copies. So think about how you will preserve your most treasured digital items. Existing technologies (such as paper & tape) might not be sexy, but they have proven themselves much more capable of persisting over time.
