Digital preservation news

Did someone declare this digital preservation month? Because if they did, I sure didn't get the meemo.

Here's a roundup of the news from digital preservation land.

File Under "Oops"

So you accidentally wipe out the database. Oh, and the backup drive, too.

There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

What did they do? Brought back the seasonal workers and re-scanned all 300 boxes of hard copies. To the tune of $200,000.

Is That Just Some Game? No, It's a Cultural Artifact. (Free registration required)

You know how every year the National Film Preservation Board publishes a list of films to be added to the National Film Registry? Well, now they're doing the same thing with video games. Cool, no? We can't save them all, but we might as well choose a few to preserve.

Mr. Lowood said that preserving video games presented certain challenges. For example the hardware that games are played on changes so frequently that there are already thousands that can only be played through computer programs called emulators, which, while readily available on the Internet, technically violate copyright laws.

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