rediscovery
Channel: Max Bell
Date: 12/01/2015

“Rediscovery” is a presentation that was intended to be entertaining, informative, thought-provoking and unexpected for the audience while still being topical to data archiving. The goal was to catch the audience off guard and change the discussion by resetting the context and meaning of the word archive. It highlights how modern electronic systems are in fact quite impermanent as archive storage systems go. It presents short and long term cases where important information was lost due to obsolescence of decoding mechanisms for that data. The first case discusses Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were forgotten by 400 AD. As a result 3,600 years of important announcements on stone became inscrutable cartoons at best for over 1,400 years. It could have been much longer had it not been for some good luck and decades of scholarly efforts by many. The other case cites the Lunar Orbiter image tapes, which were rendered unusable for 30 years due to electronic media obsolescence and organizational change. These tapes were decoded again as a result of great team effort and another measure of good luck. The Open Archival Information System model is introduced then member space agencies and organizations that follow this model are listed. EMC InfoArchive is cited as the only COTS Enterprise Archiving solution that is based on this model.