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Re: [ARSCLIST] National Recording Registry
At 10:57 PM 1/29/2003 -0500, stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
First, re the conversion to "CD's"...
1) There is no agreement (AFAIK) on the maximum "lifespan" of CD's or
CD-R's.
If it turns out that CD's gradually deteriorate (as has been suggested), we
could
wind up with millions of aurally useless (but rather attractive) plastoid
objects
down the road a piece (thanks, Mr. Bradley & Mr. Berry!)
2) The inherent difficulty with a CD on a VERY long term basis is that it
requires a specialized piece of equipment to play it...assuming the eventual
finder can identify it as an information-bearing device in the first place,
which
isn't obvious on first inspection. Imagine a visitor from planet
Hooflungdung
in the year 5249...how will he know this shiny object contains part of a
musical archive, and how can he figure out how to access the data?
Let me plead for reason here. One choice is to do nothing with the
materials in the hope that they will not have degraded when the perfect
transfer mechanism is defined - or at least that the degradation will be
more than compensated by the improved capture. If the owner says: I want to
be able to play this and I'm prepared to pay the costs, then do it. Deliver
a copy in whatever form was requested, an analogue dupe on good tape, and a
master CD to be used for future processing. That's all done in a single
pass with low-cost recorders and a high-quality player for the analogue source.
The original would not be discarded. Neither would the analogue dupe, but
access would be restricted. The CD-R would be replicated as needed and
without constraint. Then in 9425, when the perfect capture device is
defined, the original would be hauled out and recovery will be attempted -
if someone will pay for it.
It does come down to paying for it. Someone must fund the equipment and the
engineering to make the copy. For a single recording, that may be modest,
but if one is talking about the vaults of the LoC, it is substantial.
Mike
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/