Preserving electronic data

[Juan de Dios Santander Vela]

El 10/11/2008, a las 17:10, Rob Seaman escribió:

> Here is a cautionary tale of data preservation from the UK:
>
> 	http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.44.html#subj7


Getting into the meat of the link, I find that the problems with the  
Domesday project came basically from the fact that funding was given  
to a selection and recording effort, with no thought of funding of the  
curation of the stored data.

It is also worrying that in those years the National Library was  
endowed with a material it wasn't really able to handle, and the  
response was to lose it.

So the main lessons to learn from that project would be:

a) Establish long term commitment to the data assets from the start.  
And the keyword
    here is commitment, not just long term.

b) Try to use mainstream technologies as much as possible, because ad- 
hoc solutions
    can die unexpectedly. Again, Domesday used an ad-hoc solution with  
players which
    were not mainstream. Perhaps they should have not attempted their  
effort because
    other technologies were not available?

c) More than one copy of digital assets (preferably 3?) should be  
stored AND
    maintained at different locations. In the same way paintings at a  
museum are
    kept at given room temperatures and humidity degrees, digital  
assets must be
    protected from "bit rot" by COPYING the assets ALSO in the latest  
technology,
    and keep the original.

a) and c) are clearly the most costly, and what was not addressed by  
Domesday.

-- 
Juan de Dios Santander Vela
Diplomado en CC. Físicas, Ingeniero en Electrónica
Doctorando en Tecnologías Multimedia
Becario Predoctoral del Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

Franklin P. Adams: Encuentro que gran parte de la información que  
poseo la adquirí buscando algo, y encontrándome con otra cosa por el  
camino.