Preserve Photos For 500 Years

http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress/?p=1127

How ow To Preserve Photos For 500 Years
Posted on April 16th, 2005 by David
Picked up from PhotoHistory@yahoogroups.com (02005 04 15), “How To Preserve Photos For 500 Years” by Arik Hesseldahl, Forbes.com, 02005 04 14, an overview of some current thought about ensuring the longevity of digital images. The article concentrates on the work of a Swiss researcher, Lukas Rosenthaler (Imaging and Media Lab, University of Basel), who’s proposed a kind of peer-to-peer sharing network a la music sharing. This is the same concept that’s behind the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) invented by Stanford University Libraries and designed for ensuring the permanence of digital publications and their URIs: “LOCKSS is open source, peer-to-peer software that functions as a persistent access preservation system. Information is delivered via the web, and stored using a sophisticated but easy to use caching system.”

I don’t think there are any reasons why LOCKSS can’t be adapted to provide persistent access to any kind of media through a P2P network. What’s surprising to me is that LOCKSS is not being used more outside of library settings. It’s generally agreed that as a digital preservation strategy, regardless of access and use issues, the more copies the better. Information technologists, records managers, archives continue to research and experiment with records authenticity models and workflows that will guarantee that electronic records haven’t been tampered with after they’ve been transferred to an archives.

The Forbes.com article ends with another strange digital preservation concept,

“Rosenthaler, the Swiss researcher, says he’s currently looking at ways of using microfilm, the old standby of archivists and librarians everywhere, to preserve digital files. Rather than preserving the image itself, Rosenthaler’s proposal is to preserve the individual bits from the image file as a series of light and dark dots indicating the ones and zeros of the file. If properly stored, microfilm could preserve the information for 500 years or so, he says. The method could also be used to preserve music or even video information for centuries in such a way that basic technology like a microscope could be used to assemble the dots into usable data.”

Of course no one would be able to read the microfilm, which continues to be its attractiveness as a preservation medium, since no equipment is required other than a magnification aid (remember the scene from the movie The Scorpion King where Mathayus (actor The Rock) hauls out a primitive telescope) to view the contents. A microfilm equivalent of a DAT or other digital-based tape storage system is essentially worthless because it also requires the preservation of hardware to decode and restore the data, as well as duplicating equipment in case the microfilm deteriorates and needs to be copied. Of course if you’re at that stage, it’s probably game over anyway because likely bits will have been lost. The microfilm is also a serial medium, not a random access one, so, again, why bother, since magnetic tape already serves the same function. If you’re going to the trouble and expense of ensuring the microfilm survives, why not use the appropriate medium for the data itself and keep it safe rather than inventing new technology.