James Brothers wrote:

My source also said at this point just about nothing beats a good quality archival hard copy. So much for technology.

*********

When I came back to graduate school after a 20 year vacation, I unpacked some old article photocopies that had been sitting in a hot Texas garage for 15 of those years.

When I picked up some of them, the letters fell clean off the page and made a little pile on the table. I could still make out the individual letters laying there.

I am now of the opinion that for longevity nothing beats documents copied out in longhand on vellum with a quill pen, except perhaps incised copper scrolls.

Forward into the past,
Joe Roberts


PS: There is a sobering discussion of the archival drawbacks of digital in Alexander Stille's 2002 "The Future of the Past." The irony is that much of the information we have been generating in the "Information Age" is under threat--or already unretrievable due to obsolete formats and media decay.

One instance among many: reportedly 300 million pages (75k records/page)of US Census raw data prior to 1989 is lost because of storage in obsolete formats and use of ad hoc data compression schemes. Fortunately for the culprits, these records are sealed for 72 years after collection, so many of us won't live to know for sure!