Editing 3052: Archive Request

{{comic
| number    = 3052
| date      = February 17, 2025
| title     = Archive Request
| image     = archive_request_2x.png
| imagesize = 346x481px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = They just want researchers in the enclosure to feel enriched and stimulated. ('The Enclosure' is what archivists call the shadowy world outside their archives in which so many people are trapped.)
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Archived by a CONFUSED RESEARCHER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Research sometimes involves looking up old data in an archive, and old data is often not stored in a modern standard of file format. It may either be an older standard, largely forgotten and no longer catered for, or a choice of original archival format that made sense only within the organisation itself; either way, being a proprietorial internal or licensed third-party format that lost (or never gained) wider support in the world at large. Unless the archive's contents are periodically re-examined, and up-converted into more contemporary standards in a timely manner, they might not be able to provide the data the researcher needs in a convenient way. The comic shows [[Cueball]] facing several issues that can happen with archived data:
* The data is stored as paper records, which will have to be scanned into a digital format.
* The data is being sent as a CD-ROM instead of being emailed or shared online, so it will take time to arrive. Also, not every computer has a CD drive, so the researcher might need to use another computer, or buy an external CD drive, to read it.
* It will take 10 business days (about 2 weeks) to process the request.
* The data is not being sent in a common format for scanned documents, such as PDF, but a proprietary format that needs special software to decode.
* The decoder software only runs on Windows 98 or XP, versions of Windows which are no longer supported by Microsoft, and cannot even be installed on most modern computers, requiring a very old computer or the installation of a virtual machine. This often happens when old software is no longer supported by the manufacturer, so it cannot be updated to work on newer versions of Windows. This will add to the difficulty for the researcher to decode the data when they get it.

In zoos, captive animals need {{w|behavioral enrichment}} to promote physiological and psychological well-being - to keep them active and reduce behaviors such as pacing back and forth in a cage.  Zookeepers provide this by putting toys in their enclosure or putting food in hard-to-open containers so that the animals have to work for it.  The comic humorously suggests that archivists are doing the same thing as zookeepers - providing intellectual stimulation for the researcher by forcing them to jump through hoops in order to get their data. The title text suggests that archivists live in their world of archives and see the rest of the universe outside it as a cage that's trapping the rest of us.

In libraries and archives, catalog enrichment means adding useful data to the catalog, including scans of the table of contents or the whole book.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A side view of Cueball, sitting on a wheeled office chair, at a desk with a laptop on it and his hands on the laptop. A jagged line comes from the laptop screen presumably representing text on the computer screen.]
:Computer: To request data from the archives, fill out <u>this</u> form. The pages will be scanned, encoded to CD-ROM, and mailed to you within 10 business days.
:Computer: Download the decoder for our proprietary format <u>here</u> (Requires Windows 98® or XP®)
:Cueball: ''Ugh, fine...''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Archivists actually have everything in digital repos now, but they still do this to provide enrichment for researchers, the way zoos hide food for animals in hard-to-open boxes.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Animals]]