Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 439.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
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[1] From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli@indiana.edu> (26)
Subject: Re: 17.436 digital preservation
[2] From: dgants@rogers.com (16)
Subject: Re: 17.436, Digital Preservation
[3] From: Humanist <dgants@rogers.com> (5)
Subject: RE: 17.436 digital preservation
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 07:54:21 +0000
From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli@indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: 17.436 digital preservation
[Disclaimer: I'm really not an archivist. Just thinking out loud.]
Interesting quote from Garfinkel's article:
"Not all digital material is worth preserving—most, in fact, is not. But
Domesday was worth preserving and, as a result, it has been."
At first, the two statements seem quite insightful. The first part seems to
be a common principle for archivists and we're not talking about preserving
all of the spam we receive. The second part implies that worthy data may be
transfered to current formats as time goes on. File formats need not be
forward compatible as long as they're open and easy to migrate to newer
formats. So far, so good. (Especially if you add the obvious requirement
that the format should be lossless and ensures some redundancy.)
But isn't there an assumption about the inherent worthiness of specific
documents? Not to philosophize but how can we know now what will be
relevant data in the future? Sure, large costly projects should ensure that
their data should be preserved. But isn't there still a risk that the more
information we have exclusively in digital form, the more likely it is that
we might lose interesting historical data?
I'm really not a doom-sayer against digital preservation. In fact, I find
reassuring the amount of consideration this issue has deserved recently. By
talking about these issues, we can avoid past mistakes and effectively
preserve important data. But by using an archeological frame of mind, we'd
say that someone's junk might become somebody else's data, after a while...
Alexandre Enkerli
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
Indiana University
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 07:55:10 +0000
From: dgants@rogers.com
Subject: Re: 17.436, Digital Preservation
Hello all,
There is little doubt that the danger posed by unstable digital formats has
been exagerated, especially in the popular mind. So too has the
celebration of older physical forms been built upon a number of unexamined
assumptions. Those of us working in the field of bibliography and book
history are familiar with how frequently books disappear altogether. D. F.
McKenzie points to just one of many cases in "Printing and Publishing
1557-1700: Constraints on the London Book Trades," published in *The
Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. IV* (2003). He cites
"Thomas Dyche's *Guide to the English tongue*, printed by Charles Ackers in
thrity-three editions and some 275,000 copies between 1733 and 1749. Only
five copies from those editions are known to be extant: a survival rate of
one in 55,000" (p. 560).
Lest one dismiss this and other example as phenomena that occur only in
past centuries, try to find a Seattle telephone book from the Reagan years.....
Dave Gants
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 07:56:02 +0000
From: Humanist <dgants@rogers.com>
Subject: RE: 17.436 digital preservation
------ Forwarded Message
From: Norman Hinton <hinton@springnet1.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 13:02:17 -0600
One might respond, Willard, that the reason that Domesday Book data has
not been lost is that it was not originally put on a computer....
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