[fitsbits] The Vatican adopts FITS

[Rob Seaman]

While rummaging around for the technical feasibility study mentioned at:

	http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?pag=newsletter_art_00087

I came across a white paper on long term data preservation issues -  
mentioning FITS in passing - from 2008 in an IBM journal:

	https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/projects/storage/datastores/papers/rabinovici.pdf

	"As the world becomes digital, we are in ever greater danger of
	losing business, scientific, artistic, cultural, and personal assets.
	The threat of such a digital dark age stems from the fact that—
	unlike physical records that may survive decades, centuries, or even
	longer without advanced planning—digital records will not survive
	without planning and diligence. Everything needed to keep digital
	records viable will become obsolete, including hardware, software,
	processes, and formats."

The Vatican has prior history of working with IBM and it seems likely  
that this continues.  For instance the Vatican Library Newsletter  
article also credits Autonomy Systems (http://www.autonomy.com) which  
itself appears to have a working relationship with IBM.

The IBM white paper mentions many technologies familiar in astronomy,  
for instance acronyms like OAIS, SRB and iRODS also appear on the IVOA  
Data Curation and Preservation twiki:

	http://www.ivoa.net/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaCP

One project that seems like it might be of interest to the FITS, IVOA  
and ADASS communities is CASPAR, the EU's Cultural, Artistic and  
Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval:

	http://www.casparpreserves.eu

	"How can digital data still be used and understood in the future when
	systems, software, and everyday knowledge continues to change?"

Rob

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