"Crawling back under my rock."
And stay there, but what can you expect from a consultant.
(that should get things going)

There are ANSI and ISO documents whereby 'our' industry has agreed that
microfilm, under proper storage and handling conditions, has a Life
Expectancy of 500 years.
It is sad that companies have spent a ton of money to capture their vital
records onto microfilm and then not spend a cent to preserve the media.
The same is true with digital media.

Also, too many vital records are scanned at low resolutions and then
written to the cheapest CD-R that can be found with little or no
verification of image.

The fear of lost digital information stored on electronic media is real.
I'm pro-solutions, pro-answers, pro-film if it works and pro-electronic if
it works.

And, thanks Randi for getting Dan crawling again he did make 'some'
excellent points.

... John Glover
... Sourcecorp BPS/Agfa Microfilm
... 800-969-2556, ext. 367
... www.home.earthlink.net/~fyiglover


> [Original Message]
> From: Dan Elam <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 10/14/2004 7:27:13 AM
> Subject: Re: Microfilm Alternatives
>
> >The Film based Imaging Association FbIA and others may argue that there
is
> >no alternative to microfilm for the
> >long term storage of data e.g. 500 years eye readable as generally
quoted.
>
> Ok.  I'll crawl out from under my rock and weigh in on this one - seeing
as
> I've been vilified over the topic before.
>
> Can film last 500 years?  Yes.  Is it likely to do so?  No.  Probably
> everyone on this list has seen film that deteriorated.  The argument that
> film is an analog source and better suited to long term 'preservation'
> isn't without it's merits, but it's a red herring.
>
> 1.  Analog vs. Digital doesn't matter.  I know it's heresy to the pro-film
> world, but the reality is that more information will be produced on
digital
> in 2004 than all the analog in recorded history.  The fact is that digital
> is here to stay and that vast amounts of information of critical
> information are stored only in a digital form.  If a nuclear bomb goes off
> in NY, all of the financial records like bank accounts and mutual fund
> holdings aren't going to be restored from an analog source - they are
going
> to be restored from digital back-ups of the databases.  Furthermore, if a
> company did try to restore the insane amounts of information from analog,
> it would take too long and pose additional challenges (e.g.,  run on the
> banks).  The bottom line is that, as a society, we have committed to
> digital data.  The issue is no longer whether digital is the right
> media:  the question should be how to do we best manage and preserve the
> digital information.
>
> 2.  Eye-Readable is a poor metric.  The idea of eye-readable isn't really
> important unless we're talking about a return to middle ages where we are
> assuming that we lose our digital technology.  If we really get to that
> point, I would suggest that having a microfilm copy of your FileNET
> software maintenance contract isn't all that important.  Digital use
> technology isn't any different from the optical magnification technology
> used to read a piece of film (oh wait, it is - digital technology has
> advanced much more than optical magnification technology).  If you don't
> have optical magnification technology you aren't going to be sitting
around
> squinting into the sun so you read the tiny little frame of film.  (Boy,
> what a visual!)
>
> 3.  Media strategy is important - media itself is not.  CDs
> deteriorate.  They delaminate.  They lose bits.  Sometimes they lose the
> entire CD.  Like film, the deterioration process is slow until it reaches
a
> certain point and then the loss of data accelerates.  The smart thing to
do
> is to examine your media and *know* that you will have to convert from
time
> to time.  Even if the media survives, you have to factor in whether you
> have hardware and software drivers to read the data.  (Quick show off
> hands:  how many have a 5.25" drive on the computer they are using right
> now?  No.  Ok, how many have a 3.5" floppy on the same machine?)  We
> generally advise people to review their media, drives, data formats, and
> software drivers every 5 years.  If the decision isn't made to upgrade at
> that point, review every three years until the data is
> converted.  Preservation or even long term storage does require planning
as
> a part of the media strategy.
>
> 4.  Film costs more in the long run.  Like it or not, cost is an important
> consideration (if it wasn't, people would be storing the paper records -
> not film - in fire proof, hermetically-sealed vaults).  The difference in
> costs for film vs. digital is pretty substantial.  So substantial that the
> interest on the difference in capital easily pays for the inevitable media
> conversions.
>
> The bottom line is that there is no reasonable economic or scientific
> reason to produce new film today.  Demonstrations such as putting video on
> film just strike me as hilarious:  who thinks it's a novel idea to put
> analog video on film?  Thomas Edison?  Going to put digital video on
> film?  Then we are back to the same issues with file formats and being
able
> to decipher and play it back:  all with a cost of more than 50x what it
> would have been to store digitally in the first place.
>
> Crawling back under my rock.
>
> -Dan
>
> Dan Elam
> eVisory Consulting
>
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