[CPEO-MEF] PRESERVATION: Proprietary media won't last

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

[Here's an article by Steve Williams, a member of the Moffett Field  
(CA) Restoration Advisory Board, about how evolving technology is  
rendering obsolete the interactive CD developed to meet the historic  
record-keeping requirements associated with activity at the former  
Naval air station's Hangar One. I'm circulating it because it has  
broader lessons for the development of permanent environmental  
records. - LS]

Navy’s Hangar One Historic Materials Will Soon be Unreadable

Steve Williams
nuqu.org
September 11, 2011

The Navy and NASA have put significant effort and money into  
interactive historical materials to “mitigate” the loss of historic  
Hangar One as an intact historical monument. Unfortunately, the  
historical materials will quickly become inaccessible to historians  
and the rest of us, because the tools, methods, and media used to  
produce the materials will soon be obsolete and unusable, like floppy  
disks and Betamax tapes.

Because I have a background in both media and Computer Science, I saw  
this problem coming. So I asked the Navy to make the historic  
mitigation materials available in a durable form. The Navy looked  
into it and finds that won’t be possible. There may be a way to  
extract the important information for preservation, but it will be  
technically difficult, and no resources are available to do it.

In short, an important element of the Navy’s historic mitigation for  
Hangar One does nothing to mitigate the historic loss, because the  
historic documentation will itself be lost very soon.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.nuqu.org/20110911/1252/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street, Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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