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An impending quad tape dilemna?
An interesting post and ensuing discussion this weekend occurred on the Association of Moving Image Archivists listserv. Jim Wheeler reports on what could be an ominous sign for Quadruplex and 1-inch...
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Another film format extinction: Kodachrome’s last run
Today, Kodak announced the final production run of Kodachrome film, after a 74-year run. Kodachrome is yet another casualty of the long march towards digital formats, as fewer and fewer sales of...
View ArticleRetrocomputing: Remembering technologies past
Even as technology marches on, there is a slowly growing enthusiasm for looking back on the history of computing, and preserving those still-working specimens of obsolete systems and vintage hardware...
View ArticleNew Scientist article on “Digital Doomsday”
One of the topics I like to bring up in the discussion of preserving digital data is the idea of a Digital Dark Age… the notion of a period in our historic knowledge that ends up getting lost due to a...
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Reel2Bytes: Digitizing 1950s-era analog tape
Of all the work I do, I think dealing with older formats, and just figuring out how they work, is the most interesting aspect. A few weeks ago, a stack of old open real tapes arrived, along with a...
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NY Times Article on the realities and costs of Born Digital preservation
Salman Rushdie. Source: Wikipedia. Click on image for link to source. The New York Times today published an article that reflects some of the challenges of preserving born digital content – that is,...
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The last days of Kodachrome are at hand… but not film in general
If you have any Kodachrome Film stashed away, the last days to get it developed are at hand. According to Dwayne’s Photo, the last commercial developer of the film format, they will be developing...
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Sony starts MiniDisc, a staple of broadcast audio playback, on its path to...
On July 7, Sony announced that production of MiniDisc playback equipment would cease in September of 2011. According to Sony, the format’s creator, the blank MiniDisc recording media will continue to...
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Indiana University Moves Forward with its Media Preservation Initiative
1/2 inch, consumer, open reel video format used in the 1960s-70s. This format suffers from Sticky Shed Syndrome, making playback difficult. Working machines for this long-obsolete format are scarce....
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Floppy disks and modern gadgets: Keeping a safe distance
Never do this: smartphones can be deadly to magnetically stored data in some circumstances. In my dealings with preserving older, born-digital documents and data, I’ve run into this situation quite...
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