On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 5:59 PM W2HX via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
an investment in a non-destructive book scanner for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical written media
A physical book will likely outlast any digitized version of it by hundreds of years. And don't underestimate the fact that whatever digital rendition of the book is created now, in 20-30 years it may have to get re-converted to whatever is current. I remember when .djvu files were considered the archive format of choice. Then PDF came out. There will be a time when even PDFs won't be readable anymore and hopefully someone will have converted the scans before that happens.
I used to be involved in the digitization of wax (and amberol) cylinder phonograph records. The issue arose there too. Lossy? Not lossy? Ogg vorbis? Conversion to new media formats in the future? Etc.
But books, if properly handled, can exist for centuries.
I appreciate everyone, their opinions, comments and suggestions. This is a great and worthwhile discussion. As stated earlier the issues for VCF are: - Volunteers - We have them, but do they want to archive? - Volunteer Time - How much time can they give? - Scanning equipment - Minimal. We can always buy or borrow. - Space for the scanning equipment - Very little space. - Space to store the library in an HVAC environment. - We don't have this. Right now we have a small library that was consolidated, but it is not in an HVAC environment. We are working on getting a new warehouse space, and making it climate controlled. This will take time, money, and effort by volunteers and contractors, etc.
From my point of view VCF doesn't have all of the necessary resources to do an archiving activity on this scale. Like others have stated, this is best handed off to those who *do* have the resources. If we ever grow our organization to a higher level of resources, then this could be a viable thing that we could do.
========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> jeffrey@vcfed.org