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Digital technology means that 1) the intern can burn down the entire library of Alexandria with the wrong SQL statement (“what’s ‘where?’”), and 2) we still hav
by happytiger 3y ago
Digital technology means that 1) the intern can burn down the entire library of Alexandria with the wrong SQL statement (“what’s ‘where?’”), and 2) we still have no real long-term archival solution for data storage that isn’t prohibitively expensive or subject to non-retrieval due to technology advancement
Consider this: please pull the tape backups? What do you mean we don’t have a tape reader anymore and the tape has all gone bad? What about the archival DVD? They only last 25 years? Surely the Zip drive has it on it? The plastic wore out on the read heads? Is that even a thing? Amazon glacier? No SLA? No, ColeSLA isn’t a funny joke Steve. This is serious. Wait. So, where are the land records from 1870 to establish ownership of the property then?
Digital record preservation is hard and gets a lot harder the longer term you try to do it.
Governments do NOT have the proper time horizons or actual costs of preservation in realistic order or top of mind when they talk about these projects being “cost saving.”
- EvanAnderson 3y agoThe parties involved don't understand that they're trading the problem of maintaining paper records for the problem of maintaining digital media. Humanity has a lot of experience maintaining paper records with reasonable success. Digital media, not so much.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoThe issue they have is that the number of wills they have to keep is large and increasing, and will increase forever or at least until they change the rule that they must be kept in some form forever. On a related topic, and perhaps more importantly/scary, the Land Registry has already gone digital so that deeds to properties are only kept in digital form...
- LunaSea 3y agoCries in flooded, moist or burnt down physical archives.
- happytiger 3y agoGovernment could ruin civilization with unexpected moisture. That’s a strange sounding verbiage.
- notpachet 3y ago> ruin civilization with unexpected moisture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth
- happytiger 3y agoCivilization has ended once through fire, once through flood, and finally through unexpected moisture. It just sounds so Douglas Adams.
- tempestn 3y agoI don't think anyone's arguing they shouldn't be digitized, just that the originals shouldn't be destroyed.
- LunaSea 3y agoSure, but if the original are not safer than the digital versions and also less practical, than maybe that's an argument for digital-only. With more redundancies, multi-location replication and all that jazz of course.
- jdietrich 3y agoThe government department responsible for managing archives has a very good understanding of these issues and has an active remit to help other government departments understand and manage them. https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/understanding-digital-continuity.pdf https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-ma...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- michael1999 3y agoIs this the same UK government that deliberately destroyed landing records as part of their policy of creating a "hostile environment" for dark skinned immigrants from the Empire? The government has form deleting the past. Why make it easier?
- jdietrich 3y agoIf these were digitised, they'd be public domain; anyone would have the right to create their own copy. Quietly shredding paper documents is a lot easier than getting a court order against Internet Archive. Open digitisation is a very powerful tool to stop governments from throwing things down the memory hole.
- justinclift 3y ago> If these were digitised, they'd be public domain Is that a certainty? "Crown Copyright" is a thing in the UK and other Commonwealth countries, and still seems to be in use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom
- iggldiggl 3y agoAnd leaving history aside for a moment, by now government probably produces lots of native digital records, but that in no way means that they're automatically publicly accessible.
- INTPenis 3y agoWell, it also means we can build X number of copies of the Library of Alexandria, in different countries.
- kelnos 3y ago> the intern can burn down the entire library of Alexandria with the wrong SQL statement It's a little ironic to come down negatively on digital data because it can be accidentally deleted easily, when you're comparing it to a library that literally burned down. > Digital record preservation is hard and gets a lot harder the longer term you try to do it. Physical record preservation is not walk in the park, either. It's not like paper can just be stored in any old fashion and be expected to not degrade over time. And with digital records, you can back them up in several different physical locations. With physical records, you're one fire, one burst pipe, one mistake in storage or handling from losing it.
- SlickNixon 3y ago>when you're comparing it to a library that literally burned down There have been significant improvements in structure fireproofing and firefighting in the past 2071 years.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y agoI just want to state the obvious solution is to digitize and keep the original physical records.