Difference between revisions of "Talk:1909: Digital Resource Lifespan"

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Note that digital data have big advantage over books when dealing with bigger quantity. The amount of work you need to make to preserve printed book is same no matter how many books you have - so it's thousand times more when you have thousand books. Meanwhile, the amount of work needed to preserve for example collection of digital images doesn't really depend on collection size. Let's say that the used format is going out of use: you can automatically convert all images fairy quickly. Of course, harder with applications ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 08:23, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
 
Note that digital data have big advantage over books when dealing with bigger quantity. The amount of work you need to make to preserve printed book is same no matter how many books you have - so it's thousand times more when you have thousand books. Meanwhile, the amount of work needed to preserve for example collection of digital images doesn't really depend on collection size. Let's say that the used format is going out of use: you can automatically convert all images fairy quickly. Of course, harder with applications ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 08:23, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
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The software not running after OS update is such a Mac problem. Linux updates would break if closed software was commonly available, but open source can be recompiled, and Windows maintain a scarry amount of backwards compatibility, and only system-admin or DRM-crippled software ever stops working.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.202|162.158.202.202]] 10:54, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Revision as of 10:54, 31 October 2017

Even PDFs can be broken, which is why we have PDF/A (archive) - a subset of PDF that has no external dependencies and thus should last forever.

CD scratched, new computer has no CD drive anyway. - First, you can still buy external CD-ROM drive, for example connected via USB cable. Second, you can try recover data from scratched CD with tools such as ddrescue (free and OSS) or IsoBuster (shareware). --JakubNarebski (talk) 17:51, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Scratches on the DATA layer of any optical disk destroys that DATA. There is also the consideration that the plastics of the majority of optical disks degrade with time and heat. There are some optical media that are designed to prevent such scratching or corruption like the commercially available M-Disk or laser etching into a micro format into a crystal like a 5D disk. Even then the DATA stored must be in an ISO format to read as well as the equipment to read the media needs to be maintained. I have often told people that their data is never safe unless there is a constant effort to copy, check for quality, and make multiple backups using multiple modern mediums as often as humanly possible. All form of digital media can fail, even the extended warranty on a high end HDD will not cover the data lost and most EULAs for cloud storage will say the same.
Or cheaper than an external drive, borrow a friend's computer and copy the CD onto the cloud somewhere. --Angel (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
Yet something affected by that would just as likely be affected by "Broken on new OS, not updated". For example, I've got a multimedia encyclopedia which runs on Win 3.11, and thus can't run on 64-bit windows.

Interestingly, static .PDF files are intended to be electronic equivalents of printed books - an electronic microfiche if you will RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm wondering if data on an older, static, website would still be readable. Would likely still be there (or on archive.org), but might be suffering progressive link rot. Also a little surprised that the start of microfilm is so recent; I remember the library having microfilm readers (that nobody ever used) when I was young enough to spend ages staring at a machine, trying to determine its purpose. Guess it depends on the subject, when it was put into that format. --Angel (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Angel, note both the My in the title and the left arrow implying that the resource (like books) were about before Randal had access. RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

"Only to realized? -172.68.110.22 23:08, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

[Subject] wiki, anyone? Wikis have rather detailed analyses of even obscure topics in my line of work/study. --Nialpxe, 2017. (Arguments welcome) (P.S. just to be clear I mean wikis maintained by researchers and professionals in [Subject] field, not Wikipedia)

There's a wealth of thought about exactly this problem by librarians; the Library of Congress has some recommendations along with a database evaluating over a hundred formats along a variety of axes: is the format documented openly? Is it widely used? Is it inherently transparent to inspection even if the specification is lost? Can it contain its own metadata? What sort of external dependencies does it have? Is it patent-encumbered, and are there technical access restrictions like DRM? (tl;dr, images as TIFF, text as EPUB or PDF/A, sound as WAV. They're very conservative.) 108.162.249.106 05:07, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Note that digital data have big advantage over books when dealing with bigger quantity. The amount of work you need to make to preserve printed book is same no matter how many books you have - so it's thousand times more when you have thousand books. Meanwhile, the amount of work needed to preserve for example collection of digital images doesn't really depend on collection size. Let's say that the used format is going out of use: you can automatically convert all images fairy quickly. Of course, harder with applications ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 08:23, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

The software not running after OS update is such a Mac problem. Linux updates would break if closed software was commonly available, but open source can be recompiled, and Windows maintain a scarry amount of backwards compatibility, and only system-admin or DRM-crippled software ever stops working.162.158.202.202 10:54, 31 October 2017 (UTC)