Re: [ARSCLIST] Storage of audio CDs

["Steven C. Barr" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I'd think heat and light are the worst enemies of archival CD's. So,
> anything that keeps out heat and light should be good. I'd avoid wood just
> because it's a moisture conductor, and I'd not store valuable content
> anywhere steel could develop rust (ie a basement or attic). But most
> important, beyond all other factors, is many copies in many places. The
best
> way to accomplish this, of course, is make your content available online
so
> many people can download it to many computers in many states/countries.
Next
> after that is one set or more on-site and several sets at various off-site
> locations. In my opinion, a bunker-like climate-controlled storage room is
> pretty useless if the building collapses in an earthquake, burns down or
has
> an airplane crash into it. Much better to spend the money spreading many
> copies in many places. One man's opinion, YMMV, etc.
Two considerations here:
1) Copyright restrictions (especially US per sound recordings) may preclude
making the material publicly available.

2) While "bunker-like buildings" can be made resistant to all normal
events (i.e. excepting being a nuclear ground zero or the Sun going
supernova?) there is still the problem of fixed lifespans for the
medium used for storage. The building may well survive WWIII, but
when the mutant cockroaches reach intelligence to look for archives,
the disks that once were CD-R's may contain nothing!
>
> By the way, for all of you with large archives of things like interviews
or
> field recordings or other non-commercial content you'd like to see more
> publicly-available, you might see if Google will catalog and host your
> digital files. This sort of thing is right up their alley -- Google Sounds
> or something like that. They have the money and resources to afford the
> storage and bandwidth to make it widely available. Once enough people know
> about and download something, its chances of living a long time (and
> mattering a long time) are greatly enhanced.
>
Except that corporations, especially digitally-based corporations,
often have lifespans considerably shorter than we would desire for
data availability!

Steven C. Barr