Date   : Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:46:40 +0100
From   : robert@... (Rob)
Subject: Domesday Preservation

2009/4/29 Littlefield Aaron <CALITTLEFIEL@...>:
> Does anybody know how successful the Camileon Project was?
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2534391.stm
>
> >From what I could gather online, attempts were made to transfer data
> from the laserdiscs to some other format. I've no idea what happened to
> the data or how involved the government was; from the conversations I've
> been hearing - I'd welcome any sort of plan to petition the government
> or setup some form of access for potential users for the original
> Domesday data.
>

One of the community discs was apparently transferred without problem.
It was available online, until the website owner passed away...

There's an interesting note here,
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.44.html#subj7  about how much effort
was taken to try and preserve the data originally, and how fruitless
it turned out to be.

The domesday system is just the most visible tip of the iceberg in my
opinion - how much valuable information "just gets lost" nowadays?
Just on-topic, domesday1986 has gone, 8bs has gone (although mirrors
exist, thankfully).  And I hope somebody is looking after Paul Vigay's
many useful websites, after his tragic passing..    The number of
times I click a google link to something I'm looking for, to get 404'd
... And that's just stuff that vanished recently enough for it to
still be in Google's indexes..

There was concern over on the classiccmp list a while back about one
major archivist whom had a large catalogue of software and discs for
other old machines, whom died, and the collection basically vanished..
(I'm not currently reading the list, so don't know if that was ever
resolved)

It's a definite concern of mine - what happens to all my kit,
software, and resources, should I pass away?  The 'physical' stuff is
probably easier to get dealt with through directions in whom to pass
it onto, as long as those with access realise that it's needed before
throwing out "all that old junk".  But what happens to the more
'virtual' information, such as contents of websites?  I'm pretty sure
that there is information of much more importance than anything I'm
responsible for, but some bits, say the information buried in the
posts@... would definitely be interesting for people
researching the interactive tv gaming phemomenom.. (which is now
pretty much dead, at least in the UK.)  and then the's the 7.6GB of
photographs currently stored on a NAS upstairs .. I worry that
generations to come will never see them, unlike the suitcase of old
photos that came down my wife's family tree...