Karen Muldoon wrote:
>
> As original documentation and post-fieldwork documentation (the site
> archive) are ultimately deposited with associated finds at the relevant
> museum, and hard copies of digitally produced data are incorporated within
> internally published site reports, and also deposited with the site archive,
> the process of writing to CD could be regarded as a back-up measure (?)
>
Karen,
I think your post raises a number of different issues. First, I'd
disagree with your feeling that the CD (or any other digital copy) of your
files is a backup measure; things that are originally produced digitally
are best preserved digitally. The paper copies are poor, functionally
impoverished backups at best of the digital originals.
Consider just two examples: if someone else wishes to incorporate some of
your data into a larger collection, to reanalyse it, or to use it to produce
visualisations of the site, this is only going to be possible with the digital
files. The paper copies are no substitute. Similarly, if any of the museums
want to make this information available remotely, they'll either be faced
with a costly digitisation exercise to turn your paper back into digital
files (which will themselves not be as good as the originals) or else just
won't bother.
Given reasonable environmental conditions, no more onerous than those recommended
for paper, CD-R is a very cost-effective and relatively stable digital archiving
medium. Document for document, it costs a lot less to store things on CD than
it does to store the paper. (For that matter, it costs a lot just to _print_
what's on a CD. Typical word-processor files would result in a CD holding
about 160,000 pages, which would cost at least 1,600 pounds to print with
typical desktop technology.) Set against that, you have the additional costs of
monitoring of the CDs and periodic refreshing of the media. For any long-term
digital storage, you will also have to look at migrating data to contemporary
formats. As Margaret Crockett has pointed out, this can be expensive although
it isn't necessarily so.
However, you may have a ready-made solution available to you. The Archaeology
Data Service, part of the UK Arts and Humanities Data Service, exists to preserve
exactly this sort of material. As you are based in a UK academic institution,
it is open to you to use them to preserve your material and you'll have the
additional benefit that they will then be making it available to others for
re-use.
You can find out much more about them at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/
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Kevin Ashley http://www.ulcc.ac.uk/Staff/Kevin+Ashley
Digital Preservation
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