![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hmm. Changes.
May. 7th, 2007 11:05 am
While scanning a bunch of pictures into our system at work, I had this little thought on progress
In the time that I've been working, the archiving request has gone from "Print out hardcopies for safekeeping" to "Scan them into the system for safekeeping". It just seems easier to store documents in multiple drives then keep them sitting around somewhere.
Both attitudes are probably optimistic: while there's always the possibility of data corruption (even with multiple copies of backup tapes in multiple locations), I've also had to deal with far to many hardcopy archives that have been subject to lethal environmental degradation. For instance, while the flood damaged legal papers were bad, the "this is where the rats gnawed through the boxes and made a nest in the papers" was...eww. I threw a lot of stuff away that day, while using a breath mask.
It makes me wonder about the first archivist to copy records written on sun-dried brick to papyrus. He probably couldn't convince his superior to throw the old records format away either.
In the time that I've been working, the archiving request has gone from "Print out hardcopies for safekeeping" to "Scan them into the system for safekeeping". It just seems easier to store documents in multiple drives then keep them sitting around somewhere.
Both attitudes are probably optimistic: while there's always the possibility of data corruption (even with multiple copies of backup tapes in multiple locations), I've also had to deal with far to many hardcopy archives that have been subject to lethal environmental degradation. For instance, while the flood damaged legal papers were bad, the "this is where the rats gnawed through the boxes and made a nest in the papers" was...eww. I threw a lot of stuff away that day, while using a breath mask.
It makes me wonder about the first archivist to copy records written on sun-dried brick to papyrus. He probably couldn't convince his superior to throw the old records format away either.