There has been much written recently about digital fragility. Researchers and archivists have heard dueling longevity and futuristic projections. In trying to push this dire need without appearing like Chicken Little, I have embarked on serious primary research to expose the sheer volume of the problem. The in-depth article will be coming out in a professional journal within the year. Until then, I felt that I needed to speak up a bit about the need for our activism.

Between my teaching digital archiving courses and my work with clients, this issue has been prevalent in each work day. In fact, while re-processing an archives for a client, a case of 5 ¼” floppy discs were found. No one in-house knew exactly if these were of value, what was on them or even if they were created by the organization. When we offered to open them on a computer with a floppy drive, we were told just to throw them out. This is the fear that archivists are living with. Each time an archivist approaches this obsolete media, the questions come: How many others are out there? How many are being thrown out because it is easier? How many are left? How long do I save them? If I am able to find a player/drive/ etc. will I be open the software that the data is formatted in? Will it even be playable? Are we missing decades of human knowledge? How long will this continue? How can archivists slow down the moving train of media change? Can archivists increase re-formatting awareness? Is reformatting my only option? Where does emulation stand? Who do I call? Who do I write? How do I make a difference in this loss that flies in the face of everything my profession holds dear?

A colleague, Tom Featherstone, once told a class “Archivists get paid for throwing things out.” After the horrific silence, he explained that we cannot save everything. Archivists place value on what is received, appraisal occurs and the kernels of importance are retained.

In today’s Digital Age, few are seeing the kernels, the wheat, and perhaps even the farm!

A recent IDC/UC San Diego study estimated that the average American is taking in 34 gigabytes of information per day. As an archivist, let’s think about the volume of data that is being created and disseminated. If even half of one percent were historically significant, we still have a large preservation problem.

The loss of corporate, academic and personal data from the late 1980s to the current time is tragic for future generations of historians, technologists, anthropologists and sociologists. We are nearing twenty-five years with little implementation of preservation processes. This is not to say that Archivists have not offered plans. This is to say that they are not being followed. In pure sales terms, we have NOT “sold” the crisis to the people. This is not to imply that the issue is not real, it means that the dry facts were not enough to convince people of the crisis. More facts had to be gathered. Now a true implementation plan with typical business practices needs to be created.

Here are the options:

1) Do nothing and continue to sweep up after mass dumps of data. Process what passively comes to us. Complain a little (or a lot) and do the best that we can with the little that we receive

2) Be moderately proactive to educate the general public on the loss of human knowledge. Start education workshops at local archives, issue press releases individually and work at the grassroots level to educate your donors and users.

3) Be passionately proactive and begin a coordinated media campaign aimed at the public and the computer industry to work with archivists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists to stop the destruction of electronic records on all media. Work this campaign hand in hand into a reformatting program that is easy. Much like the environmentalists needed to educate consumers (e.g. “Reduce Reuse Recycle”). Catchy phrases work.

One of the biggest complaints leveled against our largest member associations is that they do not get involved in the issues that are most impactful for our day to day work. There is NOTHING bigger to archives than this, right now. Member associations are built on exactly that, their members. We can choose to have a voice.

How each professional decides to act on this data is an individual choice, but a large percentage of archivists and other professionals impacted by this severe and irreparable data loss would be a dominant force in the media, to donors and to the computer industry.

For twenty five years, archivists have been that little chick crying about disaster. It is time we grew up and became the rooster at the farm, crowing for the populace to wake up.

Illustrators are often the least known and most quickly forgotten members of the art world and as such, so many of their artistic creations are lost in our disposable society. Illustrators are the creative forces behind the images on everything from greeting cards to cereal boxes to advertising – including movie posters. All too often, the work of illustrators survives only because of the relationships between dealers who sell the ephemera and the collectors who drive the market. Scholarly information tends to be severely lacking, patchy, or extremely incomplete on movie poster ephemera. Often with collectibles, the best reference guides are written and compiled by collectors.

Ed and Susan Poole have been avid collectors of the movie industry’s “paper accessories” beginning with their first purchase in the mid-1970’s – a poster for one of Susan’s favorite movies: Gidget. Because of their decades long interest in the subject, the Pooles are regarded as experts in their field and have published several favorably reviewed books on movie posters. In addition, they maintain a website, Learn About Movie Posters (LAMP), where interested individuals can learn more about movie posters and buyers and sellers can connect to trade their wares. At the beginning of 2010, the Poole’s announced their commitment to developing an online archive of movie ephemera, Movie Poster Data Base. In early April, according to a posting to the Association of Moving Image Archivists listserv by Ed Poole, they already had developed a robust collection of information in their database including:

• 3,000+ silent studios worldwide
• 15,000+ NSS trailer numbers for identifying unknown trailers
• 25,000+ production codes for identifying unknown stills
• 30,000+ NSS poster and accessory numbers for identifying titles and reissues
• 81,000 poster images online in our archive and cross referenced

Upon visiting both of these sites, their commercial status is apparent due to advertising and promoting sellers, however, there seems to be a strong commitment to compiling accurate information and making it accessible. Seemingly, there is a plethora of information available, but it is not always easy to find. There are several search options on the site. The basic search is the simplest. There are advanced searches with an accompanying manual instructing visitor in their use. Here, one is able to search movies, posters, dealers, and items for sale. It is slightly confusing because all of these features seem to be accessible through the results of a basic search, too. Serious scholars and collectors are encouraged to sign up for specialized members only access, though it does not appear to deliver any more information.

Testing the site with a search for Star Wars movie posters is an excellent indicator of the breadth of information available. After selecting the original release from 1977 search results are returned for more than 40 posters and lobby cards. Selecting one of these items from the list delivers a paragraph about the history, the dimensions, the name of the artist, the number of printings and variances between each printing, and the NSS (National Screen Service) number. There is even cautionary information regarding counterfeits. And, of course, there are links to Poole-approved, reputable dealers selling this particular poster. It is disappointing that the artist’s name is hyperlinked, but not to biographical information. The link leads to an alphabetical list of all the artists on record with LAMP. Clicking on a hyperlinked name from the list delivers all of the posters and paper goods created by a particular artist.

Browsing the site, copyright issues do leap to mind. There are many featured items old enough to be in the public domain; however, our Star Wars example is definitely protected by copyright law and Lucasfilm could be a vigilant enforcer. The Poole’s have a statement of ownership on each entry reading:

This section is for reference use. Images found on this site are property of LAMP and are for reference purposes only with NO rights implied or given. See LAMP Disclaimer.

The LAMP disclaimer is a vague interpretation of Fair Use citing educational purposes, but it does warn patrons to investigate ownership rights before distributing images.

Fortunately, increasing the breadth and scope of the site is in the works. The Poole’s intend to include artist biographies, studio logos and printing companies into their documentation. As to be expected, this is an incredibly laborious task. This endeavor is an important task because it will preserve relatively unknown information on an esoteric, culturally intrinsic medium. The current Movie Poster Data Base is comprehensive and useful and, as it evolves, it will prove even more so. Scholars and collectors may soon be able to locate accurate and comprehensive information on one website, rather than sifting through the internet and searching for out of print books. If the Poole’s would only team up with a librarian/archivist to help streamline the user interface, improve the web graphics and design, and organize the information.

This is a big question for our AMPed Blog. The topic came up in a staff meeting talking about comments we have heard from local archives. When you talk about the costs for archival supplies, HVAC maintenance, staffing, reformatting, yearly examination for any degradation, rotating films, tapes, etc., the budgets can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, easily. Does this add up to one answer, which is pure migration?

The topic also came up roughly on the AMIA listserv early in 2010. Had we as archivists made a horrible error in judgment by focusing on cool storage instead of migration? Though I mentioned that in an earlier blog post, I have to say that the issue has remained on my mind ever since.

When I lecture, I tell my students that I take the responsibility of archiving very seriously. As few as 6% of the silent films ever created still exist. We are the last pass for not only artifact preservation but content preservation. This is akin to the push and pull of access copies and long-term preservation copies.

Can we afford to save everything? No. That has historically been accepted in the profession. Maybe there is a new question now, which is can we afford to save the originals?

Before you think I have jumped overboard to pure technology and left my archival skills behind, look at your budget. Where are your numbers headed? Where do you expect your budget money to be focused in 2011? 2012? Look at what grant money is out there. Is the money trail focused on preservation or digitization? Look again at your originals and think, how many of them need to be preserved as an artifact?

If I can find money to migrate more of those formats that do not have an artifactual value, isn’t that more ethical than keeping it in storage with bare access and a bleak future? As the AMIA listserv discussion mentioned, if we don’t migrate it now, there may be no way in the future to do so. Now or never has never been more real to me.

With budgets tight, can we continue to afford to optimally preserve the originals, migrate periodically and preserve the transitory /digital copies? That is a tall order and one that some archivists do not want to openly discuss.

I am not pushing for throwing originals out, as the original artifacts have historical value, but does a ¾” videotape have the artifactual value of a Victorian diary? Is content migration more important than spending a lot of time on a fragile and low quality original? Some examples of every media need to be saved as artifacts but does each one need the effort that other more important original formats deserve? For instance, if you have a script copy with original notes from a director or a master copy on film or a master ¾” videotape or several b-roll copies with no markings are they all equal? I would argue that those with a historic fingerprint need all the best archival tools for long-term preservation but some of the multimedia archive originals like 5 1/4” floppies and ¾” videotape might be great candidates for content migration and less appropriate for long-term storage.

The other thing that we struggle with is that many of the A/V originals just will not hold over time. The tapes will not make it to their 100th year like black and white film or photographic prints. Let’s face it, we all age. Even if you put me in cold storage, eventually my organs and joints will fail! So the best that you can do is a genetic clone one day, the worst is take an oral history in current technology and plan for the migration of my brain’s content. I am okay with that. Migration of oral histories allow for the “living history” for generations.

I can not make tape last four generations and I certainly can not foresee how to assure operational machines in twenty years, forty years and even ten for some. So the choice to make a stellar digital copy, is not really a choice but a necessity.

I still think that cold storage for the originals is the other side of the issue, but I wonder if our professional reality now, is that the originals are not going to be as big a priority for A/V archivists as migration is.

This is completely counter to what I was taught in graduate school and what I have practiced my entire professional career, but at my core I am a realist. We have to look at where the money comes from and when our equipment, copy media, and original formats will fail.

Can we focus on the content migration for certain formats and still be good practicing archivists? Is this giving up? Should we be fighting harder to change how funding comes to us? Should we work harder as a coalition with manufacturers? Do we even have the money en masse’ to make it financially sound to push for equipment/format stability? Do we need to be realists and move with the technology of the time?

Maybe a list is needed of the media that even if original, have a transitory nature and little intrinsic value. The list might be easier than we think as the two formats that I listed above were treated as transport medium from the beginning, whereas other formats such as film were meant to be the original and were treated better as far as description and care.

I struggle with this and fear the ensuing conversation but I also fear not having this conversation.

Interesting related sites on digital preservation:
Long-term preservation costs – some figures
Digital Preservation Cost Centers Digital Preservation Committee
Comparison of Methods & Costs of Digital Preservation
Keeping research data safe (Phase 1)
When will digital preservation come to an end?
Why Digital Preservation is Important for Everyone
Preservation Assessment and Planning
CARLI Preservation Working Group – Webliography

Since the advent of the Internet, floodgates have opened with people creating all forms of documents put on the web. And with open source and proprietary software, the proliferation of websites and blogs has been nearly overwhelming. But will all that material be around a year or five from now? What will exist in the future? How will it be archived? Internet content creators cannot be certain that their material will be around for years to come. A lot of people might be OK with that, but if they do want their sites around for posterity, they should be proactive in saving their works.

Although “good-faith relationships” typically exist between users and the Internet service providers, the records actually belong to the latter, and most of them do not archive all the websites in perpetuity. In 1997, Tom Hyry and Rachel Onuf wrote in Archival Issues, “From multimedia projects to personal homepages and beyond, new expressive digital media proliferate. Since content in these formats, too, can be easily altered over time, the past forms, looks, and contents of these documents become replaced, and normally lost, with the developments of their replacements.”

Another consideration is when “sponsoring organizations” of Internet sites cease to exist, like for political campaigns, so the digital contents may depart as well. This happened to Al Gore’s website after the 2000 election was finally called. Of course there is the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine to view various websites, but it does not have everything, nor are all the links active. Brewster Kahle created the Internet Archive in 1996. According to its website, it contains almost two petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. “This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world’s largest libraries, including the Library of Congress.” But Kahle acknowledges, in a 2007 American Archivist article, that “digital technologies erode very quickly. The current digital technologies only last about three years. In the last ten years, we’ve moved – transitioned – our materials three times.”

There continues to be concern about whole companies’ sites disappearing. For example, Driveway.com, a provider of free web-based digital storage, had approximately two million users. The company then announced its “demise” giving people a two-week notice to move their files. If those customers did not see the notice, they lost all their material.

There is a risk of disappearance for even the more prominent websites. For instance, on January 20, 2001, Inauguration Day, the White House website had changed completely with the incoming president. However, the previous contents of the Clinton administration’s site, and its searchable archive companion site, were “completely wiped clean.” Called “link rot,” thousands of links within other websites were broken. Not only did this create issues for the general public who may have wanted to research material from and about Clinton’s tenure, but archivists and historians know such material is vital to analyze a presidency. Fortunately, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) took action to preserve various “renditions” of those sites which were taken down. This is recounted in the article “Digital Preservation: Paradox & Promise” by R. Wiggins in Library Journal Net Connect from 2001.

Some computerized material and electronic records are difficult to preserve and access since they are “born digital.” As more documents are authored in a digital form, some of that material cannot be reduced to print, at least not without “substantial loss of content or function,” according to Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information. These documents also create other issues for archivists such as making sure works like digital photographs that might be accessioned into an archival database have metadata added to them so correct cataloging information can be kept.

The Internet Archive, amongst all its electronic pages of information, warns that when it comes to preservation, “any medium or site used to store data is potentially vulnerable to accidents and natural disasters.” And with the news reported on October 12 that a division of Microsoft, called Danger, had a server crash leaving users of its Sidekick device without their photos and other personal information, this just reinforces the vulnerability of all the electronic material that deluges the Internet.