Re: benefit of digital camera

As someone who, in his daytime job IS a professional archivist, I would
like to make it VERY CLEAR that we do NOT consider current CD or DVD
technologies to be "archival." While CD technology appears to have a
level of stability (i.e., we aren't seeing a lot of changes in HOW the
CDs are being created), DVD technology is still in a state of flux and
the media technology (what we put it on) does not have the longevity
that one would hope for in an "archival" media...others have commented
on the lifespans of paper and other media...while the lifespan is an
important issue in defining archival media, it is not the sole
criteria. Underlying technologies are also important.

While some archival institutions and organizations are investigating
the use of CD and DVD technologies for archival purposes, it is
misleading to say that they are endorsing them as being archival. The
use of CDs for "archival purposes" is only advocated when a policy of
data migration is in place...meaning that a records management program
needs to be in place to regularly test and verify the integrity of the
data being stored and then duplicating the data to new media on a
regular basis. THis is not for the faint of heart or the disorganized.
And because, for archival purposes, data integrity is sometimes a LEGAL
requirement, data migration is not without its problems. The levels of
data corruption that can occur are miniscule. but they increment with
each migration.

Do I personally use CDs for long-term storage? Sure, but I also
practice something that we jokingly refer to as "preservation through
redundancy,"
meaning I have the files stored on several DIFFERENT media and located
in disparate locations when possible.

This is an area that folks working with digital imaging are just coming
to grips with...and that includes the archivists.

Dennis Moser

On Apr 13, 2004, at 5:16 PM, BKPhoto@aol.com wrote:

> Chris and Mark-
>
> Professional archivist consider the current CD and DVD technologies to
> be archival. There may come a time when it will be necessary to
> transfer data to a different medium, but depending on how you define
> "archival", that is true of any storage medium. Including negatives
> and/or prints.
>
> Bill Kennedy
> Austin, Texas
>
Received on Tue Apr 13 20:18:40 2004