Dear Daniel, Dan, Dot,

I very much agree with Dot and Dan. There's also the issue, in addition to file format and medium, of the preservation of user experience (UX) and user interface (UI), specifically when materials are specifically presented as editions and archives. While care must be taken to choose formats that will withstand the test of time, such as TEI, I would argue that we, as a community, need to address the issue of UX and UI preservation (which to my mind can only be approached through emulation). Upfront decisions, though, about file formats can greatly influence this, though. Take for example, Dan O'Donnell's edition of Caedmon's Hymn. Since nothing in it can't be rendered by a standard web browser, it is cross platform and should be compatible with browsers for some time to come. This is not so with platform-specific editions, such as those done on CD-ROM that only work, for example, on Mac OS 9. (I recently had to acquire a computer running OS 9 so I could take a look at some of these.)

✍
Best, 
Grant Simpson
¶ Senior Analyst/Programmer, Office of the Registrar
¶ Vice President, IU Bloomington Professional Council
¶ Interim Chair, MEST Graduate Student Advisory Committee
¶ Doctoral Student, Department of English
Indiana University Bloomington


On Jul 29, 2010, at 2:25 AM, Dot Porter wrote:

Dear Daniel,

The issue of long-term preservation of digital content coming from medieval manuscripts as the source is, as far as I can tell, exactly the same as it is for any other digital data anywhere, and vast amounts of ink (real and virtual) has been used discussing the issue. Although it's a few years old now, you might start with the article "Architecture and Technologies for Trusted Digital Repositories," Jantz and Giarlo, D-Lib Magazine 2005 (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june05/jantz/06jantz.html - not really as technical as it may sound, and includes some important definitions), then move your research on from there. Although I'm not sure that there are many real and true TDRs even now, it's a fine ideal to start with. Although Dan O'Donnell is correct that many older file formats are still able to be read far past the time we might expect it, the issue of "digital preservation" is much more extensive than simply "can I still have access to the data on this file" (at least, if you ask a librarian about it  :-)  ).

Dot

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 1:12 AM, Daniel Mondekar <mondekar@hrstud.hr> wrote:

Dear Digital Medievalists and TEI members,

 

I have a question about preservation of digital content especially medieval manuscripts. I am writing a small article on the topic and I have consulted a lot sources (papers, handbooks) but most of them do not say anything about the “life span” of the data in specific formats. To clarify this – a .doc file crated in 1995. Will be most likely unreadable  in 2010.  What about other formats? Has anyone done some research on “life span” of a specific version of digital formats and when it becomes clear that the new version and the old one are not compatible anymore? And here I am talking about pdf, rtf, doc (and all office files), djvu, tiff, jpg , mpg etc. (texts and images especially)

In my work I am also making a small remark on XML as a data container since it is, in my opinion, the best way to go and the standard will surely be around for years. But what kind of steps do you make to ensure the preservation of documents that have been encoded in xml

I would also like to hear if there are opposing views on xml.

I also have the same question about the media. I found some research about the longevity of CDs and DVDs but I am also interested in other media like older hard disks, zip drives and magnetic media.

I am sorry to bother you with this, but I can use any help I can get

Thank you in advance

Daniel Mondekar

 
 

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--
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Dot Porter (MA, MSLS)       
Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian
Email: dot.porter@gmail.com
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist --  http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/
Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/
Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org
News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/
Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49320313760
Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca
Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l