OT: Archiving data/video/movies/photos/oral history

From: McFadden, Mike <mmcfadden_at_cmh.edu>
Date: Fri Jun 2 11:21:16 2000

If you want to archive old 16mm or 8mm movies then VHS is not the way to go.
My wife's uncle has made movies of family functions for the last 50 years.
I have watched them, lots of 16mm film loading and rewinding involved. He
transferred them to VHS about 5 years ago. We did keep the originals. We
have had lengthy discussions of how to preserve them for the next 50 years.
The 5 year old VHS copies are convenient to view but we can now start to see
the loss of crispness due to data bleed-through. There is also a loss of
color fidelity. We have discussed CD-ROM and other digital media. Our goal
is to keep them for another 100 years and then let the next generation worry
about them. It's amazing to see the progression of the development of our
lake community in the movies, members of our family have lived here for 72
years. Boats have changed a lot. We keep coming back to analog
photographic film, partly because of cost, mainly because of stability. I
am investigating how to save/archive photographs from our community that
span from 1928, no lake and no water, until now. Saving the photos is easy,
recording who is in them is the hard part. CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING.
I helped the community computerized our records about 8 years ago. Up until
then we used bound paper ledgers. For historical reasons the ledgers are
invaluable because each page reflects then entire history of a lot/home from
the original plat until today. We have evolved from DBASE, to Peachtree
databases, to Access databases. A computer database is no help to try to
figure out why the sewer line was run through my yard and not on the sewer
easement in 1960. Written notes in the ledger help me to understand that the
rock was in the way and that hand digging was easier through my yard. Now
if you want to know why one house is constructed over the water and not on
shore that is another story. CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING.
Mike
Slow day in computer land.
Received on Fri Jun 02 2000 - 11:21:16 BST