By: Rumple
Construction managers and city officials saw measurements that clearly showed Cologne's Historic Archive was sinking into the excavation work below it weeks before the building collapsed, it has been...
View ArticleBy: jb
I was thinking about Cologne today as I photographed parchment depositions from the 17th century at the British PRO today - and I was thinking about how the PRO should encourage me, not forbid me, to...
View ArticleBy: Rumple
Last victim found as Cologne Archives recovery switches to history. Photo gallery.
View ArticleBy: Rock Steady
Positing a complete collapse of civilization, how do we know whoever finds this stuff will have a clue what it is? Well, outside of spy novels, most formats of microfilm that I've used are clearly...
View ArticleBy: snuffleupagus
And much harder than video games, how do you preserve cultural artifacts that span several computers? For instance, think about preserving World of Warcraft, or Second Life. They have a client server...
View ArticleBy: Flitcraft
More news this time about what's been found: More than 100 books from the medieval chronicles collection have been recovered undamaged so far. Furthermore, more than 200 folders with manuscript...
View ArticleBy: jb
Husband says: it's hard to assess the reasonableness of this computer person's request in the terms that you have stated it. That wasn't really the point. The guy didn't have a problem with the...
View ArticleBy: GeorgeBickham
A few months ago I was having dinner with the head of a major manuscript collection and he was kvetching, to me, about the sheer impertinence of this computer person who wanted him to put his...
View ArticleBy: jb
My husband submits these thoughts: I'm afraid you are completely mistaken. In the UK, unpublished manuscripts created before 1989 remain in copyright until at least 2039. Yes, it seems that jb was...
View ArticleBy: Flitcraft
I'm afraid you are completely mistaken. In the UK, unpublished manuscripts created before 1989 remain in copyright until at least 2039. That's what was ringing bells at the back of my mind, Verstegen,...
View ArticleBy: verstegan
Two quick comments to jb and spouse: Concerns about copyright make my blood boil! Archives are trying to demand copyright for documents that are already in the public domain. What is it in the UK...
View ArticleBy: GeorgeBickham
Unless things have changed, the last time I was in National Archives of Scotland and National Library of Scotland, you couldn't whip out your digital camera and snap originals. I don't know what the...
View ArticleBy: zabuni
And much harder than video games, how do you preserve cultural artifacts that span several computers? For instance, think about preserving World of Warcraft, or Second Life. They have a client server...
View ArticleBy: jb
Here is the latest batch of text from my husband: Hi, I'm back with part B of my rambling essay on digital archives which, confusingly, addresses problem a, the problem of file type preservation. So I...
View ArticleBy: jb
Concerns about copyright make my blood boil! Archives are trying to demand copyright for documents that are already in the public domain. What is it in the UK again? I think 100 years after author's...
View ArticleBy: Flitcraft
By the way, this is an interesting blog post, leading to others, about just one of the manuscripts presumed lost - Cologne MS 106: The Book of Hildebald, which held important material by Bede.
View ArticleBy: Flitcraft
People might be interested to know that Cologne State Archives has launched an initiative (English here) to get people with photographs, copies and microfilm of the documents caught in the collapse to...
View ArticleBy: jb
Husband weighs in again: Most opponents of digital preservation cite point b: you've seen it a number of times in this thread. The fact is that digital storage media are inherently unstable for a...
View ArticleBy: needled
And for anybody wanting to find out even more about the Nicholson Baker vs. the librarians throwdown, here's the Association of Research Libraries'page on the matter, including specific responses to...
View ArticleBy: needled
Darling Bri, a lot of a), some of b) if the media in which the files are stored degrade over time. The BBC Domesday Project is often trotted out as the poster child for a). (more than you wanted to...
View ArticleBy: DarlingBri
I'm feeling a bit thick, but could someone explain the "software doesn't last forever" aspect of this? Are we saying that: a) in 500 years people will be unable to decode and read, say, TIFF* files; b)...
View ArticleBy: bardic
languagehat writes : "I most certainly do not have a higher level of authority." Truer words yadda yadda.
View ArticleBy: LobsterMitten
More background on Nicholson Baker, from mefi user needled: -Article sympathetic to Nicholson Baker -Society of American Archivists' response to his book criticizing library and archive practices
View ArticleBy: jouke
Apparently this is likely to have been caused by the digging of a new metro tunnel. The same german company that was digging in Cologne was slated to digg the tunnels in Amsterdam as well. And...
View ArticleBy: bookish
Just want to say thanks to the archival experts who've weighed in here, whatever your opinions. I've learned a lot.
View ArticleBy: jouke
Aww man. This is shocking. I mourn the loss of this big piece of Europese history.
View ArticleBy: jb
If we are going to spend any money, we should make digital images of our archives. Print them on microform if you want them in analogue, but as my husband pointed out, you lose a lot by moving to...
View ArticleBy: jb
Comment now from jb, who makes her own digitized images of c1600-1700 documents. I've used microfilm, and I've used digital. From both the end user experience and for the preservation of the...
View ArticleBy: languagehat
I don't suggest this out of personal dislike, but out of eight years of hearing his book quoted by smarmy bean counters looking for excuses to cut budgets. Ah, a crucial bit of context. I didn't...
View ArticleBy: Burhanistan
Just as a non sequitur, Rumi never stopped being a mufti of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. Modern revisionists like to brand him as some kind of wine drinking hippie. Of his poetry, Rumi said...
View ArticleBy: sonascope
If you're capable of using your eyes and your brain, trying re-reading what you wrote in regards to my comment on Baker and please instruct me on how I'm not responding to your point. The nice thing...
View ArticleBy: languagehat
your withering, dismissive need to demonstrate your presumed higher level of authority by behaving like a petulant holier-than-thou jerk instead of actually discussing an issue without vitriol. I most...
View ArticleBy: sonascope
Mr. Languagehat, it's not about "toes being stepped on" and your withering, dismissive need to demonstrate your presumed higher level of authority by behaving like a petulant holier-than-thou jerk...
View ArticleBy: GeorgeBickham
Hey Sonascope - what about my colour microfilm inquiry? I'm genuinely interested in what preservation professionals think of it these days.
View ArticleBy: languagehat
Oh dear, someone's toes really did get stepped on. Hope your life improves to the point where you don't take everything so personally!
View ArticleBy: sonascope
In response to: Here's what you say about Nicholson Baker if you don't like his take on microfilm and libraries and actually want to convince people of your point of view: [and] Here's what you say if...
View ArticleBy: languagehat
Here's what you say about Nicholson Baker if you don't like his take on microfilm and libraries and actually want to convince people of your point of view: Nicholson Baker is a well-meaning amateur who...
View ArticleBy: sonascope
One of the big problems with digital systems for this kind of archival work, and what is the crux of why I left the field, is that whatever system you'll end up using for these projects will be...
View ArticleBy: Catfry
The most credible theory for the collapse I have seen is that a temporary concrete construction wall in the newly bored subway collapsed, rendering the underground beneath the building unstable....
View ArticleBy: wildcrdj
And anything that is currently digitized on things like tape should be moved to network-distributed storage ASAP. Properly replicated network storage isn't going to suffer the same readability problem...
View ArticleBy: jb
From husband again: Digitizing things won't help - see the recent issue about 40-year-old NASA data tapes that couldn't be read until the appropriate tape drive was found in a museum. That is a...
View ArticleBy: ikahime
how is all of this stuff "irretrievably lost"? Isn't most of it text, on paper? Dig carefully, pull out all the books and folders, dust them off, uncrumple them if necessary, and you are good to go....
View ArticleBy: mrbill
Digitizing things won't help - see the recent issue about 40-year-old NASA data tapes that couldn't be read until the appropriate tape drive was found in a museum. I've already encountered this to a...
View ArticleBy: jb
From my husband, a historian who works primarily with electronic sources (and thus has a bias in this matter): I feel like there are two separate conversations going on, here, and I would like to weigh...
View ArticleBy: sonascope
disks demagnetize, CD-R disks fade, and even flash drives lose their data The key thing here isn't the media—it's the mechanical device to read the media, which is why there are warehouses filled to...
View Article
