Re: [ARSCLIST] file size metadata

[Brandon Burke <burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the reply, Scott.

I understand the benefits of recording this information in bytes rather
than MB, GB, etc.  And, for the purposes of longevity, we very clearly wish
to adhere to commonly accepted standards.

All the same, these figures can get excessively long at times, inviting any
number of keystroke errors and miscalculations.  If it's really that easy
to do the math, I wonder why we don't document this information in more
easily digestible units (MB, GB, etc) and then convert them to bytes when
the situation calls for it.

(Then again, maybe everyone's already doing this and I'm simply late to the
party.)

Brandon Burke

_______________________________________
Brandon Burke
Archival Specialist
Hoover Institution Archives
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6010
voice: 650.724.9711
fax: 650.725.3445
email: burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



At 01:03 PM 6/9/2005, you wrote:
> Brandon,
>
> Most of the archival institutional work we have been doing specifies
> that the file size be stated in bytes, mostly so an easy determination
> can be made as to whether and data might be missing (along with a MD5
> file confirmation). It is always easy to do the math to convert it back
> down to KB or MB.
>
> Scott D. Smith
>
> Chicago Audio Works, Inc.
>
> Brandon Burke wrote:
>
> > All,
> >
> > I am tweaking some fields in our audio collections database and was
> > wondering how the rest of you record file sizes.
> >
> > Do you allow for different units such as MB and GB in your databases...or
> > are you converting everything into bytes?  I'm assuming most standards
> > prefer you to hang your hat on a universal unit like byte.  But this
> > causes
> > some problems in that (a) every file size has to be converted into bytes
> > and (b) most users, archivists included, don't see the world in terms of
> > bytes.  When I'm trying to figure out how many files are going to fit
> > on X
> > hard drive or Y CD-R I'm looking at MGs and GBs only.
> >
> > How are you recording this data...?
> >
> > thanks as always,
> > Brandon Burke
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________
> > Brandon Burke
> > Archival Specialist
> > Hoover Institution Archives
> > Stanford University
> > Stanford, CA 94305-6010
> > voice: 650.724.9711
> > fax: 650.725.3445
> > email: burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx