Digital Doomesday book

[an10awiz]

Will film have the last laugh when it comes to photographs? The BBC digital Doomesday book has not lasted 16 years. The original was printed in 1086 and is still in fine condition. "It was meant to be a showcase for Britain's electronic prowess - a computer-based, multimedia version of the Domesday Book. But 16 years after it was created, the £2.5 million BBC Domesday Project has achieved an unexpected and unwelcome status: it is now unreadable. The special computers developed to play the 12in video discs of text, photographs, maps and archive footage of British life are - quite simply - obsolete."

Special emulation software has now been created that can read read the old files, but what a pain.

 

[bmattock]

Will film have the last laugh when it comes to photographs? The BBC digital Doomesday book has not lasted 16 years. The original was printed in 1086 and is still in fine condition. "It was meant to be a showcase for Britain's electronic prowess - a computer-based, multimedia version of the Domesday Book. But 16 years after it was created, the £2.5 million BBC Domesday Project has achieved an unexpected and unwelcome status: it is now unreadable. The special computers developed to play the 12in video discs of text, photographs, maps and archive footage of British life are - quite simply - obsolete."

Special emulation software has now been created that can read read the old files, but what a pain.

That is the fault of the BBC. NASA has had similar problems - photos taken by space vehicles and stored on magnetic tape - there are no longer any machines around that read them.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/cs-081114-moon-photo.html

Banks, however, do not have that problem. That's good, since your money and my money are stored on them, and there is no more paper back up solution.

That's because IT professionals like me earn our living making sure that idiots like the BBC and NASA do not do what they did.

If you have digital photos, and you want them to be readable in (pick a date), then you must archive them, duplicate them, protect them from a single point-of-failure, restore and test them, and translate them into new storage media as such become available. That's just the way it is with digital. If that's too much hassle, then you are not protecting your images and you have no one but yourself to blame (BBC and NASA).

On the other hand...

http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/kennedy.htm

That's called a 'single point of failure' and it happens to film too.

Every time a house is destroyed by wind, rain, or what-have-you, so are the scrapbooks and photo albums inside.

Tell me how you will get those back.

Film is great. So is digital. If you want to protect them, you have to take the appropriate measures. If you fail to do so (film or digital) it's your own damned fault.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Nobody beats Bill at common sense and eloquence. Thanks a lot! 🙂

 

[Chris101]

Yes, digital records are very stable if you re-archive them every 5 years or so (or even more often if they are critical.) Analog records like books and photographs are capable of just existing for many decades, and with some purposeful care, centuries.

Part of this advantage is due to the lack of a need to use technology to read the documents. You merely look at a book or photograph in order to read them. With computer files, you need a device to decode it into a document.

Yes, as you say Bill, both film and digital media require maintenance. Archiving digital files has the promise of extreme longevity. It is however, much more expensive to maintain digital records than it is to keep analog records (museum quality archiving not-with-standing.) There is not a digital equivalent to the shoe box in the closet.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Chris, but what of us who have been photographers for a long time and have the equivalent of 100's or thousands of shoeboxes in the closet (I'm talking film here)? There is no way to secure film "off site." Wherever it is, it's always "on site."

And there is no practical option for most people to protect original negatives from ravages of time, so we just don't worry about it. There is a way to protect digital files - multiple backups stored in different locations, the media updated with technology. It would be imprudent not to do it.

 

[bmattock]

Chris, but what of us who have been photographers for a long time and have the equivalent of 100's or thousands of shoeboxes in the closet (I'm talking film here)? There is no way to secure film "off site." Wherever it is, it's always "on site."

And there is no practical option for most people to protect original negatives from ravages of time, so we just don't worry about it. There is a way to protect digital files - multiple backups stored in different locations, the media updated with technology. It would be imprudent not to do it.

I don't have hundreds of shoeboxes of film, but I do have a pretty massive tub filled completely with negatives. I've scanned most of them, and I treat those files just like my digital camera files. So if I lose my negatives, due to natural disaster or whatever, if I have offsite backup of my digital files (which I do), I at least have something.

It is also possible to make copies of negatives and slides using film, and some people do that - but if we're going to talk about labor and expense, that is much more involved than storing digital files in multiple locations and keeping the media updated. Not many non-professionals do it.

And as some have said, you can always make prints of negatives and slides and store them in multiple locations. Not as precise as a copied negative (or a scanned one, in my opinion), but better than nothing in a recovery situation.

The bottom line is this - if you are not that serious about safeguarding your work - digital or film - that's fine. No condemnation from me. Do what you do, don't worry about it, the end. If something happens, it happens. Not the end of the world.

If you *are* serious about safeguarding your work, analog or digital, then it takes effort, a serious plan, and usually, some money. Either way.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I made the same mistake myself... A lot of my early grad school work is stored in 3.5" floppy disks and in a word processing program Apple no longer uses (the infamous MacWrite). A couple of years ago I tried to access one of these files and got a reply: the file could not be opened.

Good that I really didn't "need" to look at those papers... but I am afraid they're irretrievable now. Besides, I recycled the paper copies.

Fortunately, I'm not a large corporation or an important institution.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

I use MacLinkPlus to convert these old files. It will convert Macwrite and many other obsolete formats. Made by Dataviz, I believe.