Digital preservation: Physical deterioration

Actual objects have survived in nearly their original form for a thousand, even several thousand years; digital assets require the constant active attention of highly skilled people, and machines functioning to tolerances of millions of a millimetre.

Storage media for digital assets are physically not very durable. They are composite, made of a number of different materials such as synthetic resins, metals, and carrier media, where different materials have different requirements for their preservation, and may even adversely affect each other.

Actual objects are very forgiving and resiliant. They can survive in fragmentary form, or with quite severe losses, and still be quite understandable. We have the choice of restoring them so that they look whole again, in ways that can be reversed if others subsequently think they would be better unrestored. Will it be possible to restore and also reverse the restoration of a damaged digital file?

What to do?

It will almost certainly be necessary to adopt:

Both of these imply a thought-out policy for copying from one storage medium to another at intervals, and for reviewing standards and applying updated ones.

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Practical challenges Physical deterioration Papyrus Harageh 1, late Middle Kingdom. Image: Petrie Museum, UCL
Actual objects have survived in nearly their original form for a thousand, even several thousand years; digital assets require the constant active attention of highly skilled people, and machines functioning to tolerances of millions of a millimetre. Storage media for digital assets are physically not very durable. They are composite, made of a number of different materials such as synthetic resins, metals, and carrier media, where different materials have different requirements for their preservation, and may even adversely affect each other. Actual objects are very forgiving and resiliant. They can survive in fragmentary form, or with quite severe losses, and still be quite understandable. We have the choice of restoring them so that they look whole again, in ways that can be reversed if others subsequently think they would be better unrestored. Will it be possible to restore and also reverse the restoration of a damaged digital file? What to do? It will almost certainly be necessary to adopt: Media reformatting - copying information content from one storage medium to a different storage medium, or File reformatting - converting from one file format to a different file format. Both of these imply a thought-out policy for copying from one storage medium to another at intervals, and for reviewing standards and applying updated ones.
Practical challenges Preservation policies Retrieval and identification Technical obsolescence Physical deterioration Authenticity	Long term realities Intrinsic value Ownership factors Social / political factors Environment factors	Any answers? International actions ********* About the author

Practical challenges

Physical deterioration

What to do?

Practical challenges

Long term realities

Any answers?