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Computer help: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents?
- 5/1/09 10:39 AM
Dump the electronic format.
by roadbase - 5/1/09 7:06 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you want it to be there in 50 years, Print it out and store it in a safe light and moisture free environment.
How do you future proof your digitally archived documents?
by vattan2005 - 5/1/09 7:23 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Great question!
One way to stay on top is to hang on to your old hardware. In my case, since I have thousands of LPs and 45s, I still have my turntable. I have many Hi-8 tapes with precious video footage of the family and once-in-a-lifetime events. I still have my trusty Hi-8 camcorder. I have hundreds of open reels with absolutely unique recordings - I still have my open reel machine. I have hundreds of S-VHS videotapes that can be played only on a S-VHS machine, as a result, I still have my S-VHS machine. Not to mention all the cassettes from the old days - I still have my cassette machines. I have a desktop with a floppy disk drive - now, this is one case where I do not have any important data on floppies, but I still have access to the drive, just in case.
There is one common thread that runs through all of this. I have transferred a lot of the material from all the above to digital, but I retain the originals under temperature-controlled conditions, just in case.
I guess this is my way of making sure that nothing becomes obsolete and all my precious material will be forever retained. 
File Cabinet and Document Storage Center
by nitecourt - 5/1/09 7:34 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've heard this many times and I still say the best way is to print out the documents with a laser print and quality paper. Then put them in a file cabinet. For a business use a document storage facility.
How to future-proof...........................
by stevevic57 - 5/1/09 7:50 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have been working with a container of old photos for the past year or so. Scanning and correcting marks on old photos is very time consuming. Why am I doing it? MY family has had various 'shoeboxes' of photos that go back almost 100 years. I thought that I would bring them into the 21st century by making digital copies. Then, I read that burning them onto CDs/DVDs may only be good for about 10 or so years. So, I am only copying the photos to share them. They are already in a format that will stand the test of time ~ hardcopy prints! Just keep the photos or documents cool, dark, and dry. Shoeboxes seem to work quite well. Or perhaps a plastic 'Tupperware' container that is water resistant, dustproof, stackable, dark, etc, etc, etc.
Ultimate archiving technology
by cyberprompt - 5/1/09 8:04 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've done some research, and found that there are two, generally universally accepted forms of archival almost guaranteed to maintain their readability in the future, no matter how long. First is a relatively inexpensive form of pressed cellulose encoded with a pigment-containing liquid. It's important to keep this out of any acid/water or direct radiation source. You may also want to include a guide of sorts that helps to convert the actual language from our current vernacular of english into maybe a classical language like latin or greek. Now, if you have a larger budget, and really want your information to last the eons, go for a vocanically-formed mineral based format using simple tools to inscribe your data onto them. With a caveat: be careful not to store them close to fault lines or other areas that may be plundered by hordes of barbarians.
Hope that helps. Just kidding.
STICK TO MOST POPULAR FILE FORMATS AND DIGITAL MEDIA
by naishadhpatel - 5/1/09 9:09 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Phillip, I have had similar thoughts, and over the years the best way to preserve and future proof your docs is to follow these two simple guidelines every 7 years.
1) Store/convert digital documents in the currently popular(widespread use) and/or open file formats. For images/photos, the currently popular file format is JPG, for music it is MP3, for video it is MPEG, for web it is HTML, for unformatted text documents it is TXT, for formatted documents use PDF, for tabular data use CSV.
2) Back-up your documents on currently popular external storage media like DVDs, SATA Hard Drives.
Since the file formats and the storage media mentioned above are very widespread in their use, it is very likely that hardware and software manufacturers will provide backward compatibility to at least these formats if they do create new products. Moreover, the formats do take time to vanish and my experience says that it takes at least 10 years for a particular format to become obsolete after its popularity has been taken over by some new format. Thus every seven years you should evaluate the above two guidelines.
Forums
by sirpaul1 - 5/1/09 9:15 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
why were 3 of the 4 links i tried to access not found. Slightly ridiculous when the article is dated 5/1/'09, don't ya think?
THREE RULES OF COMPUTING
by bigdan51 - 5/1/09 9:40 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Just like Real Estate . . .
BACK-UP . . .
BACK-UP . . .
BACK-UP . . .
Maybe the answer is right in front of your face
by paulnzkiwi - 5/1/09 10:26 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
What a great question. Many of us are looking at moving data to lower cost storage which is by leveraging archiving and single instance storage. What many people don't consider is that purchasing an archiving solution is not a purchase made for today. A bank for instance must keep records for 32 years, 25 years for the life of a mortgage and usually 7years after that. So how do we store that and more importantly how do we get it back from the archive in 32 years time.
First consideration is to deal with a Vendor/s who have a proven track record and have a stronge balance sheet. Analysists such as Gartner and IDC will point you in the right direction
Secondly I am sure you have heard that what ever you put on the web is there forever. I even found a site I created ten years ago. Still looked the same (although dated)
So for a format that will survive the test of time I believe good old HTML will last. Think about it the size of the web will control any inertia for change.
As for Applications and Vendor my recommendation would be to manage and secure your information with Symantec but then again I am biased.
Cheers here's to tomorrow
Re: Hughes Aircraft's metal tape
by genepdx - 5/1/09 10:38 PM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Punched tape archiving, as suggested by an earlier post, is impractical for most of us, to be sure, but it's a great idea. I know that Boeing also used (uses?) punched tape, too. It was then archived in a nuclear-proof shelter. What other media are immune to the ravages of time? That's the elephant in the room--not the file format(s). Hollywood has wrestled with this problem for years without finding a suitable solution to my knowledge. Optical discs "fade" about as quickly as film negatives. The studios are spending big bucks to maintain their libraries now that the've been converted to digital formats. G'Luck, Doc. Your question is one we all need answered!
XML and generic like jpeg, png
by tgkprog - 5/2/09 12:33 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
you cannot go wrong with zipped XML
XML cause its text and generic and there should always be a way to get the data out - if you use some standard program like google docs or excel to create it.
you can store bonary data in XML too.
for images etc i think we can be sure that there will be legacy tools in the future to get out PNG, jpeg, gif - unless future generaions decided that they don't want anything to have to do with us!
Music - basic wav and mp3
video - not sure maybe .mov and .gp3
PLANETS - Europe's Project on Digital Archiving
by clibil - 5/2/09 12:36 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I am the Programme Manager for PLANETS - Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services - a 13 million Euro 4-year research and development project run by 16 partner libraries, archives, universities and commercial organisations - to increase knowledge about and assemble tools and services to help with long-term digital preservation.
The Project is starting to deliver working services which are mainly public domain and free to download and use. It has also published a great deal of literature about the subject and operates a mailing list to circulate up to date information.
Please feel free to visit www.planets-project.eu where there are a lot of free resources to download.
Docsphere - document card index
by matar_ravitz - 5/2/09 12:49 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The solution I promote is the document card index that in pure idea independant from file type and only hold the path to point on the file.
For all document can be opened document card with custom fieds
that can be defined and configured by the user.
Those fields - are the actual knowledge about the document and allow us find and sort needed documents.
Dispite of pure idea -
I needed after user requirements make some exceptioins and customizations for specific file types, for instance -Microsofr Word .doc files.
The shareware version of Docsphere can be downloaded at
http://www.ravitzit.com/DocSphereTrial/DocSphereSetup.zip
50+ years = print to silver-based film
by SD_DS - 5/2/09 3:07 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You aren't alone with those questions. Having a file in a valid format in 50 years is meaningless if the media it's on has been long degraded into a blob. NASA's National Space Science Data Center is at the forefront of the archiving problem: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/
When large engineering firms want to permanently (100 years or greater) archive their data, they print the data to silver-based black-and-white film.
It is usually done today with laser microfilm printers; they can print your files directly using today's software (just like a paper printer), maintaining any formatting you have. Binary files can be printed in hex or binary to allow full restoration (if it means anything as a true binary file) in the future with simple conversion software. The resulting files can be read optically, either with a simple magnifying glass or optical scanner (for optical character recognition (OCR)). Obviously, photos would be saved in black-and-white, although you could save the separate red, green, and blue filtered scans to recombine later as a color image in future viewers.
If you still can access the video tapes, it would be a good idea to simply digitize them -- uncompressed -- if you want to view them again in the future. Think of it this way -- 50 years ago, there was little thought to video compression schemes and now there are dozens of video codecs. In 50 years, it is unlikely that any of today's codecs will exist, so if you have the uncompressed digitized data, you could run it through the latest codec and view/store them again.
Paper was mentioned as a possible storage media. More organisms prefer to eat paper rather than plastic film, and there is no damage to film if it is exposed to water. The microfilm takes up much less space than paper and the silver-based film seems to be stable at least 100 years in archival conditions.
While some paper documents have lasted much longer, many of the materials used simply aren't available for archiving today. The paper must be acid-free, but so must the ink. The ink can't fade after 100 or more years; that leaves out most man-made dyes and ink jets. The ink can't cause the paper to stick together; that leaves out laser toner. Finding a paper-based solution for 50 year storage will be a very time-consuming task, if it is possible at all.
If you really want access to your files in 50+ years, you really are limited to silver-based film media. There are service bureaus that can perform the translation for you, so you don't have to buy, use, and maintain the units yourself. Search on "laser microfilm service" for the ones near you. And no, I don't work for one of those service centers, nor do I know anyone who does. I have had a number of archiving discussions in my 25+ years of electronics engineering career, and they all led to the film solution for anything over 20 years unless you go with mastered (not recordable) CDs/DVDs, which are far more expensive than film. The mastered CD/DVD solution also requires future hardware availability (engineering firms always think they can figure this out in the future), while the film solution does not.
Best of luck to you!
The future
by GaryRichie - 5/2/09 5:41 AM In reply to: 50+ years = print to silver-based film by SD_DSI think it depends on how far into "The Future" you are looking.
I would say if you are talking about 100 years from now there is nothing that will be around then that we currently use. MP3? No way. How many of us are still playing vinyl, cassettes and 8 tracks? Sure you can do it, but you have to have the legacy hardware to do so.
Look at it this way. Go back in time 100 years. It was just a little over 100 years ago that the Wright Brothers took off in their first plane. Just a little over 100 years ago when Henry Ford made that first model T Ford. Just 40 years ago when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. 100 years before that, no one would have believed any of that was possible. So, how can we expect that .MP3, .WAV, .DOC (or .DOCX as it is currently,) .PDF, .MPG, or any other three letter extension will still be valid 100 years from now? I seriously doubt that the music CD will last another 20 years. Blu-Ray will phase out DVD as prices come down, just as DVD took out VHS.
So, if you want to keep a picture forever, print it and find a great place to store it. Same thing with documents. As far as other media like music and movies goes, I just don't see a "future proof" method that is viable that doesn't involve needing the legacy hardware.
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