Saving for the future
Ernie and Tom Mighell point us to an excellent Law.com article by David Horrigan that cautions courts, law firms, organizations, and anyone else who archives documents in electronic format about the ongoing problem of obsolescence. The Law.com article uses an anecdote involving a lawyer who appears at a client's office to copy electronic files to a 3.5 inch floppy, only to find that the client is still using 5.25 inch large floppies. That, however, is only part of the problem.
We need to keep in mind that there are three levels of digital data that are involved. The data itself consists of the words and images that communicate ideas. The "carrier" is the program's data file format (.xls, .doc, etc.), including the program which creates the files. Finally, the media is the physical material on which the data files are stored.
The problem described by the Horrigan article involves both the carrier and the media. Someone trying to retrieve old data might find that the media can no longer be accessed by current readers. In addition, she might find that, after she is able to read the media, the carrier can no longer be read by the current programs. How many of us formerly used Ami Pro, XYWrite, PackRat, or other programs that were out of the mainstream or which are no longer supported? How many of us can now go back and reliably retrieve the data in those programs?
There are some practical tips that we all can use to avoid these problems:
- Always use mainstream computer programs and mainstream data storage technologies. Files created in 1992 in Microsoft Word are much more accessible today than files created using XYWrite.
- Every so often, particularly when media or carriers are updated, retrieve the data files into the current version of the archiving program or another updated program which can read them, and then resave the files in the new format. Do the same for new media as well as new carriers. Keep the old as well as the new versions.
- Archive the installation files for the program which created the data files, preferably on every CD or DVD containing the data files, so that it can be reinstalled and used to read them. Do the same for the updated program.
- Save the data in more than one format. For every .DOC file you save, also save an .RTF version of the same file.
(Item 1 of this list is my idea. The remainder come from Mark Goggin, "The Seven Fatal Mistakes of Storing Data, Music and Photos on CDs", as digested in the January/February 2003 edition of Repro Report.)
Update: A correspondent notes that the use of open-source software is another way to ensure that the goals of item #1 above are met. That is true, but very few law offices and courts are using open-source software to create their files at present.
8:03:55 AM 
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