"Digital Books wear out faster than Physical Books" (Internet Archive)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Greg Anos

Yes, digital information needs to be maintained. OTOH, maintenance is usually simple, if one does it in a timely manner. Most of the "horror stories" come from people/organizations who wouldn't bother to do that maintenance until the tech was so old that conversion methods had been scrapped. 8" floppy drive in 2022? Why hadn't they been converted decades ago to 5 1/4" floppies in the 1980's, and those to 3 1/2 (or hard drives) in the 1990's? (and those multiply backed up?) A days work both times.

As to why the discs had never been converted? I did the majority of the conversion back in the early 90s to 3.5" floppies. This last set was missed then as it was sitting on the wrong shelf in the back of the corporate vault. When it was found during a move to a new office, I was contacted and asked if it was possible to do anything with them since their records showed me as having been paid for converting the original batch. I agreed to give it a try. See my previous message for how that worked out. Personally, I think I was over-paid but the customer was happy since I was a lot less expensive than a "professional" conversion outfit quoted. Probably the last time I will ever power on that box with the two Qume 8" drives but it was nice to find out that they still worked.

And BTW, it took more than a day's work the first time out. Those old floppies were fast compared to most of their contemporary storage media but slow by today's standards and the required conversion from EBCDIC to ASCII didn't help.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

If only they had employed a Sun/FreeBSD greybeard. Would've told them to use a ZFS RAID.

That was perhaps around the time the Internet Archive switched to using ZFS.

See https://netpreserve.org/about-us/mem...ernet-archive/

I've no idea if they're still using it, or Oracle, but ZFS makes a massive amount of sense for them. Bit rot is definitely a thing, especially when you've got lots of bits.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

If you like old films, there are also ones completely lost in time too, like:

• Saved from the Titanic (1912)

which was actually shot a few weeks after the Titanic sunk, with an actual actress who survived the shipwreck (wearing the same exact clothes)!

If you're interested in that type of stuff, check out the:

• Wikipedia.org: "Lost Film"

And every so often, someone appears with some long-lost versions, sitting in someone's private vault somewhere:

• Wikipedia.org: "List of rediscovered films"

(Like lost episodes of "Dr. Who" pop up every few years!)

Mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but a lot of old silent films were lost when a warehouse caught on fire in 1937.

[Quoth]

Dr Who wasn't lost. It and others were deliberately wiped for reuse (to save less than £200 per episode on video tape) or in case of film, destroyed to save pennies on storage costs. BBC Bean counters destroying culture. Stuff made in ITV in UK mostly survives. Yet BBC had/has archives of sound back to 1922.

The reasons for lost ciinema films is very varied. There was a very good "The Doll" from Tales of Hoffman, though there is a ballet based on the same story.
I think all of ground-breaking Metropolis has been recovered, though a few bits are poor quality. The original VHS had a lot missing. Unfortunately the complete BD has only the captions in the original German, no subtitles. Still, Fritz Lang was a genius and you can mostly follow without caption catds as it's a silent film, though with a good music score.

Before polyester/PET/Mylar AKA Safety Film, film was inflammable and original cellulose Nitrate film was explosively inflammable as it's related to "gun cotton".

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

I've no idea if they're still using it, or Oracle,

Some long running websites are still using Oracle as MS SQL was only "new" (Bought in from Sybase at about V.6.0) and Oracle had Web server APIs. IBM DB2 was more suited to non-Web servers. Those are now on Linux servers but the original Web servers used Solaris on Sun boxes.

A huge amount of work to change to MySQL (or MariaDB now), so they keep paying the Oracle licence money.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I think all of ground-breaking Metropolis has been recovered, though a few bits are poor quality. The original VHS had a lot missing. Unfortunately the complete BD has only the captions in the original German, no subtitles. Still, Fritz Lang was a genius and you can mostly follow without caption catds as it's a silent film, though with a good music score.

About 25% of the original cut was missing until about, I think 2007 or 2008 when someone found a backup copy in Argentina.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

About 25% of the original cut was missing until about, I think 2007 or 2008 when someone found a backup copy in Argentina.

I think a 16mm copy, but I can't follow the German sleeve notes too well!

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I think a 16mm copy, but I can't follow the German sleeve notes too well!

Wikipedia to the rescue!

On 1 July 2008, film experts in Berlin announced that a 16 mm reduction negative of the original cut had been discovered in the archives of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[95][96] The negative was a safety reduction made in the 1960s or 1970s from a 35 mm positive of Lang's original version, which an Argentinian film distributor had obtained in advance of arranging theatrical engagements in South America. The safety reduction was intended to safeguard the contents in case the original's flammable nitrate film stock was destroyed.[2] The negative was passed to a private collector, an art foundation and finally the Museo del Cine.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Digital is fine unless the format can only be opened by a program on OS/2 (worst support for a VM).

Formats and digital storage are not problems. It's DRM that's an issue for ordinary people. There isn't any DRM that can't be defeated by experts even if server is gone. See MS "Plays for sure".

Cheap paper doesn't last. The 100+ year old books don't use the paper called Pulp in 1930s. My 100+ year old books better than may 1960s to 1980s.

If you want physical print then parchment or better still, clay tablets.

Some of the 1930s children's books I'm working on for the MR library practically FEEL like clay tablets, LOL! The paper is so thick it resembles construction paper, and these books, I swear, are at LEAST 2" thick! They look and feel like tomes compared to what the same book on modern paper would be!

[graycyn]

Every year, when there's a new set of hurricanes, killer tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, or wildfires, I think about the books being lost. Plus even the every day smaller disasters that just hit single households.

And then there are illustrated titles, where people literally cut them up and sell the illustrations for people to use as decor on eBay. I can think of a limited edition non-fiction title I own that is becoming more scarce because of this sad practice! Author died 1940, illustrator 1958, so if I live long enough, maybe MobileRead gets it. And published 1930, so not too long to be PD in the USA as well. But I'm not young...

Print, while it certainly can last a long time, is still very, very vulnerable.

[j.p.s]

Some years ago acid content in paper was a concern. Has book printing gone 100% to acid free paper or is that still something to worry about?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Some years ago acid content in paper was a concern. Has book printing gone 100% to acid free paper or is that still something to worry about?

Yes it is. Only higher quality paper is acid free. Historically acidic ink was an issue too, the parchments might have holes instead of text, only a problem on double sided (Codex).