Waters himself faced the problem a few years ago when, as associate librarian for Yale University Library, he developed a project to transfer 2,000 books from microfilm to optical disk. Midway through the project, the software he was using became obsolete, and the disks no longer could be easily read. At the New York State Archives, Margaret Hedstrom, now at the University of Michigan, tried unsuccessfully to read magnetic tapes, recorded in the 1960s, which mapped land use throughout the state. There's no quick fix in sight. This week, the Getty Conservation and Information Institutes will convene a meeting in Los Angeles to discuss these issues.
Some archivists look to technology as a long-term solution.
Ironically, some of the latest ideas sound more like the past than the future. Another company, Cobblestone Software, actually uses paper to print out complex patterns of dots and dashes representing computer files. Called PaperDisk, the product is designed to resist the damage that heat, cold, and magnetism inflict on magnetic and optical media. This message was posted through the Stanford campus mailing list server.