> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Spindler
> Sent: Thursday, February 26, 1998 8:39 AM
> To: 'Peter Graham, RUL'
> Subject: RE: Aspects of digital preservation
>
> Thanks to Peter Graham for amplifying the range of issues on digital
> preservation. I would add a slightly more granular level to Peter's
> categories from a presentation I gave last year at a Visualization
> Technologies conference here at ASU...Here are my Five key Issues in
> Digital Preservation:
>
> 1. Media - Physical Degradation
>
> 2. Media - Format Obsolescence
>
> 3. Software/operating system obsolescence
>
> 4. Backwards compatibility/Data Corruption during migration (some
> software that's says it's backwards compatable, isn't/corruption or
> loss can happen during migration through human error or
> system/transmission failure...)
>
> 5. Metadata - essential both for identifying the system and system
> requirements and for creating emulation programs or migration
> strategies...Should metadata be stored in electronic form on the same
> media as the system???
>
>
> The conference itself was a hoot - most faculty were invited to
> present their leading edge technologies in an eight minute
> presentation. Of course everyone went over and I was scheduled second
> to last so I was cut to six minutes....Rather than talking about our
> scanning projects I chose to offer the something I thought would be
> more useful to their work in the long run....Not much reaction from
> faculty.
>
> Harking back to another recent thread there was some interesting work
> presented in that conference regarding 3D modeling and object
> manufacture from digital models....
>
> Rob Spindler, Head
> Dept. of Archives and Manuscripts
> Arizona State University Libraries, Box 871006 Tempe, AZ 85287
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Graham, RUL [SMTP:]
> Sent: Thursday, February 26, 1998 6:27 AM
> To: Time&Bits
> Subject: Aspects of digital preservation
>
>
> >There are two aspects in the preservation of digital material---the
> medium
> and
> the organization of the data. With respect to the latter, I submit
> that a
> system in which all digital information is uniquely identified with a
> 64-bit
> identifier could be an important element in the organiztion of the
> material.<
>
> There are at least three aspects of the preservation of digital
> material, and
> the medium is the least of them (as Michael Lesk has written, in the
> future
> preservation will mean copying, not maintenance of an artifact).
> Hilnet
> notes the organization of the data (which I'm not sure is the same as
> identifying it, as he suggests). There are two other aspects not
> there
> noted:
>
> a. Technology preservation: a shorthand term for the necessity to
> migrate
> information through technologies, both hardware and software, so that
> it is
> in fact usable in substantially the form it was created. This begs
> the
> question of whether the information should be preserved in original
> form
> along with its implementing technologies, or migrated through new
> technologies as they occur. Jeff Rothenberg of CLIR (and Rand) has
> been
> contracted to examine the possibility of resources carrying with them
> sufficient description of their behavior such that exact replication
> of
> original software/hardware isn't essential.
>
> b. Intellectual preservation, or authenticity, or integrity: what is
> the
> assurance that the digital information I am viewing is in fact what
> was
> originally encoded/created? In the scholarly community this has to do
> with
> preserving the research trail and the integrity of dialogue (my
> footnote
> should stably refer to a text even if you change your mind), and in
> the
> business community it has to do with integrity of transactions (when
> was this
> lab notebook really created, when was this transaction authorized).
>
> There are bibliographies on this stuff, some of which are noted in the
> Time&Bits reading list. --pg
>
> NEW ZIP: Peter Graham Rutgers University
> Libraries
> 169 College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1163 phone:
>
> <URL:http://aultnis.rutgers.edu/pghome.html>