ON THE LIFESPAN OF DIGITAL MEDIA

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 42, October 16, 2016, Article 11

Nick Graver snail-mailed me a hardcopy of an interesting July 2, 1997 post on the PhotoHst email list regarding the lifespan of digital media. This topic has been discussed here earlier by Dave Bowers, myself and others. The post by Clyde Davidson crisply summarizes the pitfalls of digital media storage and why we must always keep physical versions on hand, whether we're talking about silver-based photographic negatives and prints, or the printed books we bibliophiles hold dear. I OCR'd the hardcopy for use here. Were it a numismatic literature item, I would hang on to the original in my ephemera files. -Editor

It was asserted that compared to traditional silver-based imaging, digital images have -

No Image Degradation: The negatives & positives won't fade away or be destroyed by fungus or time. They'll all be sitting on their CD-ROMS or some other technology that keeps every pixel fixed in place for years to come. Print as many copies as you like, the first will look as good as the 10,000th or 1,000,000th copy.

This argument is not only wrong, but backwards. Digital storage is less secure than any other form of photographic storage. As a high priced Information Security consultant, part of what I do is consult for "Business Resumption Planning". This is the art of keeping your digital electronic data safe and useable over a long term. A "long term" example: Hospitals in Illinois must keep patient records in a secure form "forever"; it's the law.

That's a real problem in the digital world. The current BR standard for magnetic media is two (2) years. Hum, that isn't very long in the photo world. I recently dug out some floppy disks that were last used 3 to 5 years ago. While they had been stored properly, I was unable to read or fix any of them. They all had to be reformatted. Therefore, any magnetic media - floppies, hard disk, tape, removable disk like "Zip" or "Syquest", must be regenerated every two years at the longest. Do you really believe that people will do this? They don't today.

You also have the issue of magnetic corruption that can very easily destroy your data. I hope you keep good backups. Also, molds and fungus grow just fine on disks and CD-ROMs; I've seen it.

Nobody knows how long CD-ROMs will last. The current BR estimate is 10 years. That's still not very long by photo standards. How long are you willing to wait to see if it is still readable?

There is also the conversion issue. In the past 15 years, 8" floppies, paper tape, and punch cards are all technologies that have gone by the wayside. If you were sued and had to produce data from any of these, could you? Probably not. However, if you were given a negative from a hundred years ago you could make a pretty nice print. In 10, 20, or 30 years from now what format of CD-ROM will be used? will your drive read today's disks? Will your software understand the formats? How much are you willing to bet on any of this?

I'm not "anti-digital" by any measure, however, do NOT use digital technology for photographic permanence. Sure, you can make hundreds if not thousands of "original" copies, but tomorrow that one critical byte in the header is garbage and you have nothing. If you do digital, make sure you have an evolving BRP keeps you up to date every year or two.

BTW, all of these arguments are irrelevant. People will move to digital photography (or any technology) when the cost/benefit beats out the traditional photography (or any current technology). It has always been that way and always will be that way. That is why some pros and amateurs are doing it today. That is also why most aren't.

Points well taken, and every bit as valid as they were in 1997. For these reasons and many more, as much as I love the convenience and searching power of online numismatic literature archives, I would never advocate disposing of the original materials - that would be plain stupid. The collecting community always has and must continue to be the steward of this important material, ESPECIALLY the bulky catalogues and periodicals. Institutional libraries mustn't deaccession their originals once a set has been digitized. Store them in a cheaper offsite facility perhaps, but keep them safe. Individual collectors will continue to play an important role; few of them will have individual libraries to rival the institutions, but collectively their holdings are equally important. -Editor