>Seriously, be thankful for all those boxes of records at the PRO, and pray
that nobody decides to "scan everything in" and destroy the originals (quite
common around here). Paper can be read for 500 years or so, digital data
become useless fossils within 10-15 years - try reading an old 9-track tape!
John,
Digital techniques have thankfully moved on since the '9-track tape'.
Digitisation is allowing access to material which would otherwise
deteriorate through over-use - for a good UK example see the work done on
the earlist surviving manuscript of Beowulf at http://www.bl.uk. There is
also now provision for archiving / long term preservation in digital form,
particularly for material which originated in digital format, most funding
bodies will make that a condition on any project they might support. See
http://ahds.ac.uk/depositors for a scheme suitable for material generated in
the mining-history field.
As to being able to read paper 'for 500 years or so' - the paper might be
fine if kept in the right conditions, but how many people can interpret the
text from 1503 even if it is written in English?
Peter
______________________________________________
Peter Claughton, Blaenpant Morfil, Rosebush, Clynderwen,
Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE.
Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 07831 427599
University of Exeter - School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies
(Centre for South Western Historical Studies)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.
See http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/files/mining-history/ for details.
Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/
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