by Kim Schroeder

In teaching multimedia archive,s I think about the future of our content constantly. Like a new mother, I fret for its security, growth and health. What is THE answer for our degrading media, emulsions, for our software obsolescence and our equipment falling down around our ears?

Recent discussions on the AMIA listserv brought new energy to this discussion and I wanted to put my spin on this. The subject line was “What’s Not Cool About Cold?” and it solicited some serious discussion about whether we have made a horrible mistake for a generation of archivists and content.

Jim Lindner argues that the imminent demise of tape players is more important in an archivist’s preservation decision than our focus on the imminent degradation of the media itself. The latter being our big decision to place much of our media in cool or cold storage. The group discussion mentioned the fact that many of our players are no longer supported by their manufacturers and the simple math that the lack of machines and the existing wear on their parts will not even cover the playback of the volume of archival tapes awaiting…migration? This hits a deep reality. Have we lost hundreds of thousands of hours of archival motion under our watch? Maybe even millions or billions of hours?
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by Kim Schroeder

After teaching so many archival and technology classes, I began to realize the incredible depth and breadth of our loss of data. Over the last three decades billions of discs have been created and sold and presumably used. What has happened to these discs? To the data? If even 5% was worth saving for historical purposes, that is still about one and a half million discs to save and migrate. Has that been done?

We all know that the answer is “no.” So that means that we need to look at what is important and what level of effort is necessary to save it. I know that we can not save everything and I know that we would not want to. As Nik Cubrilovic mentioned in a recent Washington Post article entitled “Letting Data Die a Natural Death”: “Not only is a lot of this data not important, but do we really want to keep it? I certainly would not want a full account of everything I did in my youth sitting on a server somewhere. I am also certain that we do not want the record of our as a society time being documented and discovered by future civilizations based on Twitter messages.”
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by Karly Szczepkowski

Fast, easy and cheap. This was the title of a recipe book my mother created for me when I left home and entered the “real world,” but it can also describe the ideal technology for dealing with digital obsolescence. Who wouldn’t want technology that is fast, easy and cheap? It’s straightforward (“I’d like to order the archival program that is fast, easy and cheap, please”) and it certainly rolls off the tongue nicely. But what exactly does fast, easy and cheap mean?

Let’s tackle each element on its own:
Fast – You can quickly enter information.
Easy – You know exactly what information to enter and where to find it.
Cheap – You can do all this within your ridiculously slashed budget.
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by Shari Grantham

Technology relative to the field of Archives is a much-needed friend as well as an enemy of sorts. The merits of technology are easy to note – probably most importantly the quick access it provides to Archives both internally and externally. Items are much easier to keep track of and to locate internally. When items are made available to the public online, research is easier, time is saved, and so are many other resources. There’s no doubt that technology has opened Archives up to the world.

The speed with which information can be uploaded and made available is astounding – whether from a digital camera, digital video recorder, or general file type (Word, Excel, etc.). Gone are the days of waiting days, if not weeks, to update your files and information. Time to clear the library of that old hand-written card catalog. Or is it?
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by Margie Friant

Archivists have special needs when it comes to choosing a file format for storage. We have all heard of or endured the nightmares of file format obsolescence. There are no guarantees when it comes to file format longevity, but here are some tips to help you choose a file format that stands a chance of still being readable in a few years.
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