History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

[dcarrigg]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

Ah, yes . . .

Well, fair enough, there are some other advantages besides legacy issues. Namely, they are:

1. cheap to operate.


2. very fast.


3. able to produce a large number of copies of the same document.


4. good for one line at a time printing without wasting a sheet each time.

[dcarrigg]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

but yer right dc, about how they got screwed there in GA - wonder who sold the land for the building and who's cuzzin got the construction contracts... and THEN who got the commish for the bond sales....

These are the new primary questions everybody should be asking of local government. It is the most important decision local government makes. Unfortunately, reporting and public consciousness has not kept up.

[Sutter Cane]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

If the data was important, they should have spent some effort to maintain it, and not lock it up and forget it. A review every 5 years or so to evaluate if physical storage and data formats need to be migrated would be sufficient. PDF is about 20 years old now, and since its specification is open, I'm reasonably confident it will still be readable another 20 years from now.

Yeah, but what SHOULD happen and what actually happens are two completely different beasts. If you think public institutions are behind the curve on this, private business is much worse in many cases. There is little emphasis placed on keeping stuff from years ago, that might be useful years from now, when all anybody has an eye on is the next quarter's profits.

I've used my share of floppy disks and tapes, and everything that was useful is still accessible, with multiple remote backups of the important stuff. This is really simple to do nowadays.

I would have to disagree pretty strongly with this statement. Depending on the format, it can be impossible to find machines that can still read old discs or tapes, and even if you can find the hardware, finding usable examples of old software is harder. Having to find a version of backup software from the 90s to read archived floppy discs, for example - hard to do.

Audio/video formats are the worst, though. They haven't made u-matic tape machines for years, the ones that are still working break constantly and are tough to find parts for. VHS is a more common format, but the tapes are more fragile. Hi8, betacam, there are a million different formats that were briefly used commercially and then abandoned. And don't even get me started on formats and codecs for digital video - no industry standards, a total nightmare.

There will be a huge loss of a/v data from the 80s and 90s. Filmakers trying to make documentaries focusing on these eras are already running into problems finding usable footage.

OCR can be done in addition to scanning the docs as an image. Storage is cheap.

Yeah, it can be done, but like I said in an earlier post in this thread, it is a tedious and time-consuming process, and the technology just isn't there yet for many documents.

[don]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

like I said in an earlier post in this thread, it is a tedious and time-consuming process, and the technology just isn't there yet for many documents.

nor is there the will . . .

[don]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

on a tangential front, important to photographers, etc . . .


Today's Question: I have a question about printing digital images. With all the new shifting definitions of what "archival" means in digital printing, I am wondering how you would recommend printing and storing your images for the best longevity. Currently I have an Epson R3000 printer using pigment-based inks and I use a variety of professional papers such as Moab, Epson, and Hahnemuhle. I do not spray varnish the finished prints, although some photographers have recommended this treatment. I store the prints in aclamshell acid-neutral box purchased at an art store in a sun-free location.

What do you think?

Tim's Answer: I think you're doing great.

In theory digital bits will last forever, and prints will eventually degrade. But the reality is that there are a great many things that can cause digital files to become unreadable. And one of the challenges of digital files is that it isn't quite as simple to verify that the files remain readable. That's not to say it isn't possible to simply connect a hard drive and open a file to make sure it actually opens, but when you consider the large number of files stored on a high-capacity hard drive, and the practical limitations of trying to open each file to make sure you can reliably read them all, and this becomes a bit of a challenge.

By contrast, when you want to make sure that your prints are still in good condition, you can open the storage box and flip through them, getting a very quick sense of the quality of the prints.

If you utilize the best acid-free archival papers in conjunction with pigment-based inks, and store those prints in reasonably controlled environmental conditions where the prints are not exposed to extremes of temperature, humidity, or light, the prints will likely last for decades, and potentially over a century. The estimates of print longevity are obviously based on some degree of extrapolation, but the point is that if you use the best materials and store the images in a safe environment, they will last a long time.

As a result, a common approach is to make an effort to ensure the reliable storage (with backups) of your entire collection of digital photos and videos, and then to also print your very best work and store those in an environmentally controlled way. This provides you with the best of both worlds, in my mind. And an additional benefit of prints is that years down the road when someone who perhaps isn't as technically savvy wants to review your work, they can simply look at the prints rather than try to figure out how to access and review the large collection of digital images.

from: Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter

[flintlock]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

Yeah, but what SHOULD happen and what actually happens are two completely different beasts. If you think public institutions are behind the curve on this, private business is much worse in many cases. There is little emphasis placed on keeping stuff from years ago, that might be useful years from now, when all anybody has an eye on is the next quarter's profits.



I would have to disagree pretty strongly with this statement. Depending on the format, it can be impossible to find machines that can still read old discs or tapes, and even if you can find the hardware, finding usable examples of old software is harder. Having to find a version of backup software from the 90s to read archived floppy discs, for example - hard to do.

Audio/video formats are the worst, though. They haven't made u-matic tape machines for years, the ones that are still working break constantly and are tough to find parts for. VHS is a more common format, but the tapes are more fragile. Hi8, betacam, there are a million different formats that were briefly used commercially and then abandoned. And don't even get me started on formats and codecs for digital video - no industry standards, a total nightmare.

There will be a huge loss of a/v data from the 80s and 90s. Filmakers trying to make documentaries focusing on these eras are already running into problems finding usable footage.



Yeah, it can be done, but like I said in an earlier post in this thread, it is a tedious and time-consuming process, and the technology just isn't there yet for many documents.

I was just thinking about this today. How will people 100 years from now look at all the pictures we are taking with our camera phones? I almost never print anything. People take more pictures than ever, but will probably end up with less of a record for the future generations.

[lektrode]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

I was just thinking about this today. How will people 100 years from now look at all the pictures we are taking with our camera phones? I almost never print anything. People take more pictures than ever, but will probably end up with less of a record for the future generations.

OTOH, why might they want to?

Admit it, we all enjoy text messaging in the bath tub by candle light…

but seriously - with point taken/accepted/agreed-with - but...

once upon a time, 'records' were fingerpainted onto cave walls, got better when they were chiseled into stone, inked onto papyrus, printed via the gutenburg machine...

then little holes in punchcards...

then magnetic tape...

then disc drives (remember the DEC pdp1144 1 meg drives? = my 1st computer function)

now we have the wildwildweb and facebook/youtube....

tho i still keep important stuff in paper form, and the amish will likely have some kind of scheme that doesnt depend on electricity, methinks the digirati will come up with a solution.

[don]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

today's story on Georgia, albeit a bit of a rehash . . .

Budget Cuts to Archives Put History Out of Reach




The Georgia archives has state-of-the art equipment, including four floodproof vaults in the building’s core.

By KIM SEVERSON

MORROW, Ga. — The Georgia Archives, which holds both historical curiosities and virtually every important state government document ever created, is about to become nearly impossible to visit.

In November, a round of government budget cuts will reduce the staff to three, one of them the maintenance man. Thousands of documents that pour in every month are likely to languish because no one will be available to sort through them, archives officials said. People who view accurate and open government records as the bedrock of democracy are outraged.

The move will make Georgia the only state without an archives open to the public on a regular basis. But this closing is simply the most severe symptom of a greater crisis facing permanent government collections in nearly every state, professional archivists say.

An amalgam of recession-driven budget cuts and fast-moving technological changes could result in a black hole of government information whose impact might not be understood for decades.

“When our humor gets black, we talk about this as a period of time that could be the Dark Ages for public records,” said Vicki Walch, the executive director of the Council of State Archivists. “Fifteen years on either side of the year 2000 is very dicey.”

Every state has an archive, which is mandated to hold the official records of government and, by default, the history of the state.

Laws governing which records must be saved and for how long vary from state to state. But all archives offer a trove of information. One can track who met with a governor, trace the history of every state law, find out whether a particular person held a professional license and pore over tax records.

Genealogy is big business for archives, too. As part of a television series, the restaurateur and cookbook author Paula Deen searched for her family history at the Georgia building here and discovered an ancestor who once owned slaves.

The records are often used to settle legal disputes. When two Georgia counties were in a fight over the sales tax revenue from a lucrative Bass Pro shop that straddled their boundaries, they turned to the state archives to settle things.

“The archives are like an insurance policy,” said Richard Pearce-Moses, director of the archival studies program at Clayton State University, which is near the Georgia Archives Building south of Atlanta. “There is a good chance we might never need to know where the county line is, but when we do, we really, really need to know.”

Increasingly, government records are being produced electronically, and agencies use a variety of software to collect and store them. But technology is changing so quickly that few protocols exist on how to gather and protect digital records from tampering. That applies to those once produced on paper as well as new forms of communication, like government Web sites and Facebook pages.

As a result, governments have to decide at what point an electronic birth certificate, for example, will be considered an acceptable legal document.

“A lot of this is untested in court,” said Sarah Koonts, the director of archives and records in North Carolina. “What kind of metadata do we need to have around an electronic record to prove it’s authentic?”

As with paper, preservation is an issue, too. No one knows how today’s technology may hold up and which methods of collection may go the way of the floppy disk, leaving a pile of pixels no one can read in 50 years.

State archivists are scrambling to learn how best to handle digital records just as they are absorbing the largest budget cuts in recent memory.

City and county governments are shrinking, too, so local officials are either not collecting as much information or simply sending what they do collect straight to the state repositories.

The volume of paper records held by state archives jumped to more than 3.9 million linear feet in 2012 from about 2.5 million linear feet in 2006, according to a survey by the Council of State Archivists.

“It would be one thing if the archives could say we are going to quit collecting paper and just collect electrons,” Mr. Pearce-Moses said. “But we are getting more digital content on top of more paper.”

In South Carolina, where the oldest document in the archives was created in 1671, W. Eric Emerson, the director of archives and history, is trying to hold on. At its peak in the 1980s, his department employed 125 people. Now there are 28. He has had to give up on conservation completely.

“Budgets are being cut and staffs are shrinking at the exact time when we need to be adapting and spending on digital infrastructure,” he said. “If you are in a state that thinks government should be smaller, it’s just far more challenging.”

His fear, like that of other archivists, is that “20 or 30 years from now, this will be a period in which numerous government records were lost.”

After government budget cuts in November, the archives building will have a staff of three people, one of them the maintenance man.

It’s more than just adding server space and storing files shipped in from other agencies.

“That’s like taking 200,000 documents, throwing them in a Dumpster and telling a researcher: ‘What you need is in there. Go get it,’ ” he said.

There are some bright spots. Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia has said he will push to restore some financing for the state archives in the coming budget cycle, and new federal grant money is available to train archivists in electronic records.

In August, the Obama administration issued a directive aimed at overhauling the way federal agencies manage and preserve records. Many state archivists hope those protocols will inform their work.

Meanwhile, debates over what to keep and what to throw away continue.

“Is the Twitter feed of Gov. Jan Brewer in Arizona a public record? Yes. No question,” Mr. Pearce-Moses said.

“Whether or not it has to be kept and where to keep it is another question,” he added. “What it really boils down to right now is triage.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/us...es.html?ref=us

[Sutter Cane]

Re: History? Eh, who needs it!: Georgia Closes State Archives

Some complained that my opening line on this thread was over the top. From the Friends of the Georgia Archives web page:

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp has announced that the Georgia Archives will be CLOSED to all public access beginning November 1, 2012. He cites as reason the requirement for a 3 % budget reduction for all state agencies. Secretary Kemp has chosen to take the required cut of $730,000 entirely—and only—from the State Archives.

For some perspective:

• Between FY 2010-2012 the Secretary of State’s Office has had its budget cut by a whopping .28%. In that same time the Archives Division has seen its budget cut by 13.53%. Professional Licensure, on the other hand, has only seen a 2.41% decrease suggesting that it is more important to make sure your barber has a license than making sure the state has access to its own records.

• While those divisions directly under the SOS have seen a 9.18% reduction in budget between 2010 and 2012, the Drug and Narcotics Agency (an “attached” agency of the SOS that falls under the SOS budget) saw its budget increase by 51.71% over that same period.

• The Secretary of State’s 2012 budget was $31.45 million. Assuming the 3% budget cut is based on that number, the SOS would have to cut $944,000. The official announcement only reflected a cut of $732,626 but in no place is it clear that this number represents the ENTIRE 3%. If the $732,000 figure represents just the archives’ portion, then the archives will be responsible for 77.6% of the proposed cuts.

• And in the height of irony, as the SOS plans to reduce transparency in government by closing the archives to the public, the Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission has had its budget INCREASED by 4.17% over the past 2 years.

I stand by my original assertion that this is the natural result of decades of anti-education, anti-public sector and anti-government (unless it is the military or the drug war) rhetoric.