Date   : Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:37:22 +0100
From   : darren.grant@... (Darren Grant)
Subject: Domesday Preservation

On 29/04/2009 13:14, "Littlefield Aaron" <CALITTLEFIEL@...> wrote:

> I'm not a massive user of this newsgroup - but I think it would be
> useful if we all could submit to a BBC Micro links page at the online
> archive. That way we could potentially keep tabs on any changes within
> the community regarding dead links, as well as providing a means of
> directing BBC related traffic to benefit from such pages. If we inform
> the page owners that they are linked from the mailing list website - and
> to ask if there are any changes (downtimes, etc) to let us know, it may
> help the situation.
> 
With regard to disappearing information what we really need is two things,
distributed redundancy and off-line archive. The on-line redundancy is
relatively easy, in that there are plenty of people with web sites that
could host material if the other site agrees. I presume that someone like
the the National Archives are collecting an archive of documents and
obviously there are people like the Bletchley Museum.

I'm afraid a significant part of our cultural history is going to be lost.
For example people use digital cameras now. What happens when you die, will
your relatives bother to look on your computer for photos? Probably not
chances are if it is an old computer it will get dumped. Even if they do
think to keep stuff perhaps on CD-ROM or DVD it will likely be left in a box
in the loft so if it still works in the future will people still be able to
read it ? With real photo prints people tend to keep them when clearing a
relatives house and they get passed on, this is how we get to see so much of
our history today.

The Domesday is an example of how quickly this data has become difficult to
retrieve. Not through any short sightedness on the original creators, in
fact the opposite, the creators used what appeared to be the technology of
the future, selecting a technology that was supposed to be superior to video
tape, not degrading over time. Clearly something the National Archives have
considered, but no solution has been found. An interesting problem that
needs some addressing by government bodies. Anyway getting a bit off topic.

With regards to the domesday system it seems to me that the first task is to
get the raw data packaged up in such a way that it can be at least held by
people who have the disc's.