On Oct 2, 2007, at 4:06 AM, Ron May wrote:

>
> But we need the National Park Service's approval before we slip  
> them  digital
> facsimiles.
Government typically lags behind the private sector. Sometimes that's  
good, otherwise, it just gets in the way.

> I still believe there will always be photo paper and  chemicals
> available to professional studios, so why not to us? Oh for sure,  
> your  average
> small mom & pop photo shop will run out of supplies one day.

Kodak hasn't produced slide projectors for several years. Market  
forces will drive the demise of traditional photo by pure cost  
considerations. It's up to about $45/roll of B&W film to conform to  
our SHPO standards. That's high but not when costs are taken into  
account.

> I  seriously
> doubt a mega server in 10 years will be able to read our digital   
> images of today.

Au contraire, batch conversion software already exists that can do  
the same thing to multiple photos. That will be the salvation of mass  
storage (due to the mental template of the poor sod who has to sit  
down and migrate all those photos thinking that at 1 photo per 30  
seconds, I have 5 lifetimes of this soul destroying druck work ahead  
of me). The problem now is that people do not think about migrating  
images from one format to another until about 2 formats ago and then  
it's a major pain. That's because the paper mindset is paramount. If  
they're 1's and 0's in a computer, they're immediately available.

That's rosy view. Thorny view is that some pencil-pusher beancounter  
will deem storage space for historic preservation not worth the  
pennies and without consultation will delete the goodies. But that  
happens in the real world too.

Lyle Browning