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Thank you Andrew for raising the issue of file format obsolescence - its
not all about the medium. I am heavily involved in the development of
Digital Preservation Practices at the National Archives of Australia.

Even ignoring the problems of file format obsolescence, my advice for
anyone contemplating storing records on CD-ROM, or even DVD is simple -
DON'T DO IT.

I had the dubious pleasure of retreiving the data from a batch of
CD-ROMs. This batch was a relatively small one of around 750 disks.

Having to insert, copy the documents to a hard drive and then eject
these disks over and over and over again took the good part of a week,
with great disruption to any other work I was trying to do at the time.
It was a very frustrating exercise. I am glad it was only a one-off
task. If you commit yourself to refreshing the media every couple of
years, the frustration will compound.

There is a huge economy of scale when you have lots of documents on a
small number of media, rather than a very large number of media. Not to
mention the logistics of keeping track of a huge number of disks.

My own thoughts, not my employers, but I have given this advice to
anyone who would ask


John Lovejoy
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