Re: [ARSCLIST] What to Keep and Why....was now why preserve

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Brock-Nannestad" <pattac@xxxxxxxx>
> Most administrative archives are ordered according to the way the generator
> ran their business, so in order to be able to use them, you need to now about
> historical administration.
>
And, sadly, in many if not most cases, the "archive" was regularly discarded
on the grounds that it was no longer important to the business!

> The essence is: you will never know now what you might need in the future,
> but it is absolutely impossible to store everything, so in a way you decide
> by elimination of material what questions it is possible to answer in the
> future.
>
This, in turn, comes to my facetiously-titled by seriously-intended
"Barr's Thirteenth Law Of Data Archival!"

"99% of a given data archive will never be accessed in the future,
and its archival was thus wasted effort...however, there is NO way
to establish in advance whether data falls into the important 1%
or the unused 99%!"

Steven C. Barr