[Leica] Digital memories prove fleeting

[timatherton at theedge.ca (Tim Atherton)]

> An interesting article about the archivability of digital images from
> the NY Times:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/66otp
>

I've got to wonder how long the media is going to keep re-cycling this same
basic (and somewhat flawed) story?

For example: "The life span of data on a CD recorded with a CD burner, for
instance, could be as little as five years if it is exposed to extremes in
humidity or temperature."

Well so is film - if you kept those old colour negs from your wedding in the
attic - cold and damp in the winter and rather hot in he summer - they will
be toast in pretty short order too.

It spends much it's time comparing apples with oranges and then saying they
are pears.

As for the LoC having to spend time setting standards for preservation of
digital material - well whoopi do. Most archives (and especially any
government archives) still spending much of their time working and
re-working the "workflow" of what is archived and how that gets from the
outside world into the archives as the world changes (an archives never
archives "everything" - an awful lot of time is spent working out what to
chuck out before it ever gets to the archives - and as the world changes, so
those decisions change - working out how to do digital is, in many ways,
just one more of those processes)

etc etc