Digital Archiving

What does this mean to you? Ensuring that your digital photos are available and accessible for years to come?

In addition to your photos, digital preservation is important to the many libraries and repositories throughout the world.

"Yet no one has figured out how to preserve these electronic materials for the next decade, much less for the ages. Like junk e-mail, the problem of digital archiving, which seems straightforward, confounds even the experts. 'To save a digital file for, let's say, a hundred years is going to take a lot of work,' said Peter Hite, president of Media Management Services, a consulting firm in Houston. "Whereas to take a traditional photograph and just put it in a shoe box doesn't take any work." Already, half of all photographs are taken by digital cameras, with most of the shots never leaving a personal computer's hard drive."

" Jim Gallagher, director for information technology services at the Library of Congress, said the library, faced with "a deluge of digital information," had embarked on a multi year, multi million-dollar project, with an eye toward creating uniform standards for preserving digital material so that it can be read in the future regardless of the hardware or software being used. The assumption is that machines and software formats in use now will become obsolete sooner rather than later." New York Times, November 10, 2004, Even Digital Memories Can Fade By KatieHafner

We have to learn to be migrators. Make sure that all your digital materials are backed up in current media, and be sure to transfer them as new media comes along. There are few new computers that have 3.5" inch drives these days. Check through your floppies and transfer what you wish to keep to CD, DVD, or tape backup. Heaven forbid that you have 5.25 disks with important-to-you material! Keep in mind you will need the archived material in a format that can be read as time passes. Text comes to mind! This is of course of no value when it comes to photos and video.

Digital archiving is an arena that has found many new companies vying to develop their way of storing digital archives, and those that see a need for a common standard. That would be a challenge in this day and age!

CSTB , Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, is one of the national planners for the future of the effects of that future. One study is for the National Archives and Records Administraton, NARA - their resources are gargantuan!

RLG, the Research Libraries Group, sponsored a unique two-day working meeting to exchange ideas on building international archival gateways.

Worldwide efforts are ongoing to study ways to preserve what has been digitized and what will be digitized in the future. The Internet is a tremendous digital resource. We can often find obscure material from other parts of the world to aid in research. Much of these materials were only available to scholars in days past.

We as individuals may not be involved in national or international efforts, but we can address these issues on our own computers. Making an effort to back up materials will also help to clean off your computers and make room for more, more, more - just do it!

Ann Harney