Preserving electronic data, #2

[Rob Seaman]

And here is a tale from the Apollo missions:

	http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/11/vintage_ibm_tape_drive_moon_dust_data

Perhaps specific media should be certified as "archivable"?  This  
particular issue is neither the age of the media or of the equipment  
(although these are important issues), but rather, how widely  
supported the format has ever been.  CDs remain readable even though  
we have since transitioned to DVDs and then to Blu-Ray.

Another question is the simplicity of the format.  One suspects a home  
electronic geek could build a machine to read 9-track tapes from a  
description of the format.  Building a working exabyte drive would be  
much harder.

All of these options are distinct from loading data into a "permanent"  
online archive.  Permanency there implies a level of continuing  
maintenance that the story of 40 year old NASA data tapes does not  
demonstrate, for instance.  Real permanency involves offline physical  
media stored in a salt mine (or equivalent) with the provision made  
for storage of reading equipment, blueprints and documentation of the  
data formats, a table of contents, and even some overall description  
of the intent of the project - the curation part of the equation.

The implicit expectations placed on the future beneficiaries of the  
data horde should be extremely minimal.  For instance, no constraints  
were placed on even the species expected to receive the Voyager  
recordings:

	http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

Or see the extreme measures taken with the Westinghouse time capsules:

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Time_Capsules

(Likely guaranteed to outlive the corporation itself.)  Many libraries  
have copies of:

	"The book of record of the time capsule of cupaloy,
	deemed capable of resisting the effects of time for
	five thousand years, preserving an account of
	universal achievements, embedded in the grounds
	of the New York World's Fair, 1939."

See http://www.archive.org/details/timecapsulecups00westrich

Rob
--

On Nov 10, 2008, at 9:10 AM, Rob Seaman wrote:

> Is this list still active?
>
> Here is a cautionary tale of data preservation from the UK:
>
> 	http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.44.html#subj7
>
> Rob
>

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