Long Term Archive Security

[28XX]

We've never had it so good!  to almost quote a certain smug Conservative politician.  The internet today is a land of plenty.  Flickr, Photopic, You-Tube et. al. lead the charge, followed by a multitude of worthy club/society or home-made web sites.  It seems almost all the historical information we need is there at the click of your mouse.

 

But what of the future?  What will the big hosting sites do when their contributors pass away, cease to pay their hosting fees (if applicable) and fail to log in for (say) 12 months ?  Will the content be deleted?  Who, if anyone, will decide what to keep (cute pictures of kittens?) or not (the only surviving digital record of a 120 year old photo which, after it was scanned, was destroyed  in a house fire).

 

What about the clubs? anyone who has been a member of a club or society will be familiar with their life-cycle.  A group of friends start meeting informally and set upon some worthwhile activity which they all contribute to in a rush of enthusiasm.  When money gets involved, (as it always does) one person suggests they form into a society with a committee, chair, secretary, membership etc. etc.  As the organization matures it becomes increasingly harder to find people to fill the roles.  Key people move on, or die, and eventually it is wound up.  The website it created then exists un-managed in cyberspace until the hosting agreement comes to an end.  Then its gone.

 

The personal website is even more at risk.  You know the type.  "I've scanned all my grandads / fathers photos and present them here free for all the world to see."  I love them, affection and gratitude oozes from every page, you can feel the blood and sweat lavished on them by their authors as they grappled with html coding.  But again, what happens when the author is no longer capable and the money runs out?

 

Discuss.

 

 

 

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Possibly useful? We are already awash in information. Large proportions of it getting lost may be a good plan.

[plarailfan]

I feel rather concerned about this, as my family are not interested in my old (1980's) railway photo's, model railway and other "hoarding" I can visualise my missus, cheerfully chucking everything in the skip, when I'm gone !

Here is one of my historic pics and it's not even that old really ! http://www.flickr.com/photos/41294071@N02/3807960912/

I think it's time there was a national photo archive, run the the Govt, that would upload interesting pics onto the internet permanently.

  The HMRS has a photo collection at the Midland Railway Centre, Butterley and I am considering donating my photo's to them eventually and just hope they will accept them, make them available (preferably online) for people to view and I hope they will still exist in these circumstances in 100+ years time ! One can only hope !!

Most of my flickr pics are "trash" in so much as they show just another class 70, model railway exhibition, or the preserved, Middleton Railway. But, just a few, are very interesting and worth saving for future generations !

[Pacific231G]

I think there's a fairly good chance that in about two hundred years almost all records of our age will have disappeared.

"Thank you for contacting the International Archive. We're terrribly sorry but because of a coding error in 2116 all visual records relating to the development of railways, the Battle of Britain, and Ealing Studios were accidentally wiped. Unfortunately the physical records were digitised in 2076 and then destroyed when the British National Archive became entirely cloud based.  In answer to your other query there are no recordings still in existence of the Beatles or Edith Piaf. We have no record of a  William Shakespeare was he a popular musician? " 

 

It's almost impossible already to play video recordings from as recently as twenty or thirty years ago and if your first unpublished novel is on a 5 inch floppy disk it's probably lost forever unless you can afford to get it converted.

 

I remember a short story from some time ago in which the entire human race had been succesfully evacuated to another planet but in order to do that the culture had become obsessively utilitarian. Absolutely nothing that wasn't of practical value had been taken. The hero was an artist who had managed to get hold of a vintage but still working space ship from a museum and before the sun blew up was filling it with as much as he could carry of humanity's memorabilia. That wasn't much so he had to make some heart rending choices. I think he took one of Shakepeare's plays but the object  I always remembered was that he found space for just the finger of god from the Sistine chapel to stand for all of Michaelangelo's works. 

[Fat Controller]

According to a friend who's a professional Archivist, even material from as recent as twenty years ago in some formats is already accessible only with great difficulty, and by specialists, whereas 500-year-old 'hard copies' are easy to access, if not always to read.

[jonny777]

Yes, it is very worrying. I copied a lot of my commercial video tapes to dvd and then sold the tapes on Ebay (It seemed like a good idea at the time and I needed the money ) . But now I find that my latest laptop will not play some of my earliest dvds that were recorded on an old Philips machine that broke down about 5 years ago.

 

Fortunately, those dvds will play on my current full size dvd player, but how long will that last?

 

I think that with collections of slides, negatives and the like - one should add them to a will and donate them to a railway photograph archive. At least that way, there ought to be no worries of partners dumping them in a skip.

 

I am toying with the idea of purchasing a 3TB external hard drive and loading all my digitised items onto that. I know that may fail one day, but if I keep copies on dvd, blue ray or memory sticks, and update everything as technology improves, then maybe most photos, videos, text items that I treasure will survive, at least as long as my faculties do.

[Pacific231G]

I gather the current thinking is that if you're not backed up in at least two different places in addition to the original then you're not backed up at all.

[pH]

 

I gather the current thinking is that if you're not backed up in at least two different places in addition to the original then you're not backed up at all.

Shades of the dreaded 'three tape cycle'! (That's me showing my age )

[pointstaken]

But who is to say what is of interest and worthy of retaining ?

 

Dennis

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Funny, but I was at an archives meeting recently where we were talking about storage.

 

The cost of putting material into deep store is now getting prohibitive, as is using multiple sites to store items. I know there are trials going on to see if some of the stringent conditions to keep archive material can be watered down a bit, without damaging items. Energy costs are something that all archives are trying to reduce, or at least not increase.

 

Who knows what future formats hold? Digital material is currently generally kept on different external hard drives but there seems to be a move to using (possibly cheaper) third parties to host sites which is rather worrying.

 

As Dennis remarks above, decisions have to be made as to what to keep and how to keep it. Things like Council Minutes, for example, used to be sent to the binders so that hard copies could be preserved. Nowadays most are online but will they still be there in 5, 10 or 20 years?

 

Depends how the country, and society as a whole, views the importance of recording the past. If the choice is between a new hospital, school or achive store, you know what the choice will be.

[Dunsignalling]

But who is to say what is of interest and worthy of retaining ?

 

Dennis

Time generally decides that for us. What seems commonplace today may become important if everybody else discards their equivalent.

 

Just as with antiques and "collectibles", it's the lost majority that make the surviving examples valuable.

 

I know one of my photographs to be unique as only a friend and I were present when a one-off occurence happened - and he wasn't carrying a camera! That's on 35mm and I have given copies to several other people who are aware of its significance so it's probably safe (ish) but digital stuff is dead easy to destroy - click - are you sure - click - gone.  

 

As for the "cloud" that's just storing your stuff on somebody else's hardware. It might be better protected than your own but it's also more of a target for miscreants. There are plenty of TV programmes covering what happens to physical property when you stop paying the storage fees and I don't imagine digitised pictures etc will be treated any better.

 

Hard copies and an executor well briefed on the organisations likely to be interested in them are the best chance of ensuring your material survives. 

 

John  

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

I think there's a fairly good chance that in about two hundred years almost all records of our age will have disappeared...

Much of the stuff that no-one remains significantly interested in at least. It is use that maintains availability. From this perspective you may be confident of something like Shakespeare's continuing currency, unless actorising totally ceases as an activity.

 

Even if official archives go under, various forms of hard copy will - sometimes freakishly - survive. For example, with the fab four totally forgotten, their output will be restored to circulation in C23rd thanks to my sister's collection of singles found in a town dump when it was excavated. Endless academic theses will be written debating whether the scratches are intrinsic as an early expression of the still remembered 'punque' or 'pink' movement (ferocious arguments over which is the correct rendering), or simply accidental artefacts. Those holding to the punque/pink interpretation make much play of the supporting handwritten style comments on the sleeves with messages such as 'whiny drivel' and 'coprotic commercialism'.

[pH]

(I think there's a fairly good chance that in about two hundred years almost all records of our age will have disappeared...) Much of the stuff that no-one remains significantly interested in at least. It is use that maintains availability. From this perspective you may be confident of something like Shakespeare's continuing currency, unless actorising totally ceases as an activity.

 

It's not just 'interest' that matters, but 'interest over time'. In the late 1970s, there was a reference in a Sunday glossy magazine to a book written in the mid-1950s, describing it as the first British book of the modern environmentalist movement. By the middle of the next week, there was a waiting list of several hundred requests for what appeared to be the only remaining library copy of that book in Britain. Due to low (or zero) borrowing in the previous 20 years, all other libraries seemed to have dumped any copies they had. What is being done/said/written now, that is currently being ignored but will turn out to be significant in the future?

 

Even if official archives go under, various forms of hard copy will - sometimes freakishly - survive. For example, with the fab four totally forgotten, their output will be restored to circulation in C23rd thanks to my sister's collection of singles found in a town dump when it was excavated. Endless academic theses will be written debating whether the scratches are intrinsic as an early expression of the still remembered 'punque' or 'pink' movement (ferocious arguments over which is the correct rendering), or simply accidental artefacts. Those holding to the punque/pink interpretation make much play of the supporting handwritten style comments on the sleeves with messages such as 'whiny drivel' and 'coprotic commercialism'.

Have you ever read "History Lesson", one of Arthur C. Clarke's short stories? What you've written there sounds very much like a summary of it.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

It may well do. The tale of freakish survival I was working from is somewhere in the 'CLAVDIVS' novels of Robert Graves. He probably got that plot element from a writer of classical antiquity, along with most of the rest of the major themes!

[Kenton]

 

But who is to say what is of interest and worthy of retaining ?

Historians.

 

You know those who are left after the war is over to write their version of what caused/happened/resulted during preceding history.

 

My vision is in two hundred years a "Time Team Special" unearths what was once a spare bedroom complete with model railway and computer connected to some cable and bits of plastic labelled DCC. After painstakingly removing the skeleton of the former occupant they find a disc drive loaded with images of how a metal kit was built with hot metal. Is that really what hands were used for before we just connected our brains and conjured up our 3D solution to everyday nightmares?