Preserving the past and planning for the future

Following my interview with Nathalie Ceeney, CEO of The National Archives (TNA) (IWR September issue), where we discussed how the government is tackling the preservation of its born-digital content. I recently had an equally interesting conversation with Simon Stammers, sales director at Anacomp about archiving documents, using more traditional means.

Anacomp create and archive records onto microfiche and 16mm roll film, apparently they have the world’s largest installed base of film generating systems (they also scan and convert documents for electronic storage and management). Simon explained that although Anacomp have a digital operation within their business there is still a necessity for hard copy material; typically financial and regulatory data. They currently produce 1 million microfiche a month at their Salford production centre.

It was interesting to see that there is still a place for this kind of preservation of information, ok it might not be a growth industry but Anacomp seem to have found a comfortable niche to exist in. Archiving in the future won’t just be digitally-based.

I have also been reading up posts from an attendee to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) conference in Chicago last month. There were some difficult questions asked on how and what to preserve from both digital and physically generated content.

As an attendee to the event, Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, archives, records and information management student, discussed on her blog these debates and issues raised by the panel as well as conference goers.

For example, one session’s panel of experts examined the issues of preservation of born digital records in architecture and engineering. There was mention of archiving related materials created from Building Information Modelling (BIM). This technology means certain digital printers have the ability to produce physical models adding one more type of record to be preserved.

Kramer-Smyth says the problem is that there has been “an explosion in the various means of representation. The architecture world is catching up to other industries (such as the auto industry) that have been doing this for 25+ years”.

Other matters the SAA panel thrashed out were efforts to make digital preservation as robust as anything that a physical archive achieves. Kramer-Smyth also senses a growing effort to include archivists earlier on in preservation projects rather than years after the contents creation.

That reminded me of something Ceeney said in our interview, “I think you will find leading edge R&D Techies in the world are actually probably in archives because we are the ones who have seen this challenge coming and have been putting resources behind it”.