Digital Archivists: Protecting Public Data from Erasure

Best thing I ever heard from the head of archives at the BBC:

Once you format shift, you will always be format shifting.

Keep your originals whenever you can.

I don't understand this phrase, are you able to explain it?

Guess: If properly stored (physically), good-quality paper documents and photographs will last for centuries. But as soon as you digitize them - you're now chained to the treadmill of maintaining/upgrading/migrating digital archiving systems. Compared to keeping the old-fashioned Archive Storage Room dry (and fire-free), that's 100X the labor and expense. Forever.

I can see the value in this, but .. originals, and the gear to read them, do not last forever. Plus for many formats the act of reading puts wear on the physical artifacts. So if you want to actually use the information, you have to format shift it to digital in the first place. And then you're back to the same question as the rest of us, how to maintain the bits.

A lot of paper archives and libraries burned just recently in LA.

True.

But from fire-resistant storage cabinets, to concrete-lined file rooms, to underground archives, the tech to make archives ~99.5% fire-proof is more than a century old. And if you add redundant storage sites for the high-value stuff...

Vs. anything digital is far more vulnerable to digital malice.

As someone who spent the last 2 days figuring out how best to digitise my father's old Hi8, Digital8 and MiniDV tapes, I take umbridge with this!

Keep originals if you can, but make copies ASAP, as close to lossless as possible. Don't depend on the right hardware being around in the future.