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Science Friday > Archives > 2001 > April > April 27, 2001:

Hour Two: Preserving Digital Information

How can we ensure that the vast amounts of information available today are all available in the future?

This week, CNN announced plans to digitize all of its video archives, allowing quick access to thousands of hours of video footage. The company Corbis has decided to move the vast Bettmann Archive of photographs from their New York offices into huge climate-controlled underground mines in western Pennsylvania. The move will buy some time, slowing the degradation of the photos and negatives as the company archivists catalog and digitize the collection's millions of images.

Around the world, researchers are trying to come to terms with the vast quantities of digital information coming on line. E-mail. Sound recordings. Image collections. One organization is even attempting to collect an archive of the entire Internet for future researchers to study. But archivists must take care to make sure that such information is stored on media that doesn't degrade, that systems capable of reading the information back exist, and that data about the data is stored so that people looking at it in years to come can understand what it is, who created it, and what it was for.

The Rosetta Disk. image courtesy The Long Now Foundation

This hour, we'll take a look at the problems of preserving bits and bytes over the long term. Plus, the challenge of designing a new Rosetta stone, preserving samples of language for the generations.

Call in with your questions and comments at 1-800-989-8255, and share your opinions online in our Listeners' Lounge (registration required)

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Guests:
Margaret Hedstrom
Associate Professor, School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Robert White
University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy
Director, Data Storage Systems Center
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Brewster Kahle
Founder
The Internet Archive
San Francisco, California

Jim Mason
Rosetta Disk Project Manager
The Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, California

Books/Articles Discussed:

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Related Links:
Preservation (Library of Congress)
Library of Congress American Memory Project: Technical Info and Background Papers
Data Storage Systems Center | CMU
Internet Archive
The Long Now Foundation
The Rosetta Project
RLG DigiNews
Scientific American: Article: Going Digital: 03/97
Preserving Digital Information: Final Report and Recommendations
Wired 8.11: Must Read

This segment produced by: Charles Bergquist