Archivists Grapple With Problems Of Preserving Recent Culture Held On Tape Cassettes And Floppy Drives | Techdirt

Archivists Grapple With Problems Of Preserving Recent Culture Held On Tape Cassettes And Floppy Drives Greer's archive includes floppy disks, tape cassettes and CD-roms, once cutting-edge technologies that are now obsolete. They are vulnerable to decay and disintegration, leftovers from the unrelenting tide of technological advancement. They will last mere decades, unlike the paper records, which could survive for hundreds of years. In the belly of a former whisky store in the inner Melbourne suburb of Brunswick lies a vast and varied collection of artefacts that feminist scholars can't wait to get their hands on. Nearly 500 boxes in this dark, temperature-controlled warehouse hold a lifetime of handwritten letters, browning manuscripts and newspaper clippings. But there are more modern treasures too: floppy disks containing an unpublished book about Margaret Thatcher; two computers, a Mac Powerbook G4 and iMac G5; and voicemail recordings about dinner plans in 1976. And where will all the many hard drives of today be in 30 or 40 years time? Even if we can extract the files, how will we read the .docx, .TIF, .WAV, and other formats - will we have software to do that.....? There is no easy answer especially for home users. All you can hope for is to keep transferring data from your older media, to newer media that you buy, and always try to use open data formats to save your files in. See http://ift.tt/2b2QoAN