Date   : Wed, 03 Jan 2001 17:21:40 +0000
From   : Paul Wheatley <p.r.wheatley@...>
Subject: Re: VFS: (BBC Video Disk) : Doomsday Project

"F. Haroon" wrote:
> 
> You know what's a real shame, that whoever made the
> Doomsday Project decided to use Video Disc, in the age
> of the CD-ROM already there... VD's scarcely ever-used
> at all compared to CD's.  How much were VD's then??
> How could you expect them to take off like that?

I think you're missing the point a little there. Storage media isn't going to
stop at CD's (or even the next step of DVDs). How long will it be before your
average desktop PC doesn't have a CD ROM compatible drive in it (but
something half the size and 500 times the capacity?). 10 years? Probably
sooner. The problem of hardware devices becoming obsolescent has been going
on since the birth of computing (punched tape, cards, magnetic tape, floppies
etc) and is set to continue at an increasingly alarming speed. The solution
isn't to wait for newer devices but to produce software and digital documents
in a way that does not tie them to low level aspects of current computer
platforms.

Regarding your take off comment, SCSI had only just been standardised when
the Domesday came out, but it turns out that that *did* take off. This is
fortunate for us as it represents the best way to get the data off the discs.
*:-)

Even if you can get an authentic copy of your digital object's byte stream
onto a storage device on your current computing platform, you still need a
way to interpret it meaningfully, and ensure you will have a way to interpret
it meaningfully into the future.

Anyway, apologies for turning the BBC list into a digital preservation rant
for a day. I'll wind up by quoting the URL for a very nice potted history of
BBC Domesday, written by Andy Finney who worked on the project back in the
day.

http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html

Cheers

Paul

-- 
Camileon Project Officer
http://www.si.umich.edu/CAMILEON/
0113 233 5830