Digital BW, The Print

Tim Atherton wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>  > So silver negatives are a good thing to have.
>  >
> 
> hmmm - so did I miss where she mentioned plastic?

Heh.

I'm admittedly not an expert on what the accepted use of
the term "archiving" is, but it's clear that this archivist
is thinking in terms of material stability - which is apparently
what she was asked about in the first place.  If "archiving"
means "create a physical artifact and store it deep in a
salt mine", then, sure, archiving is entirely about material
stability.

If one chooses to create DVD-Rs and stash them in a binder
which is forgotten, then material stability *is* the limiting
factor and the archivist's observations are totally relevant.

As others have pointed out, though, data archival is a different
beast.  Material stability is a factor, but it's not a limiting
factor because data can be replicated without degradation.  The
question then becomes one of how to manage an archive; when to
replicate data to avoid loss due to material instability or
disaster.

The downside is that there's a cost associated with actively
maintaining an archive, not something we tend to think of when
we're accustomed to storing negs in boxes.  Would I be willing to
pay $15 a month to Amazon S3 to keep 100GB of my data safe?  I
doubt it; I don't need that level of reliability and availability.

Photo-sharing services (pbase.com, flickr.com, photobucket.com,
etc.) are positioned to own the bulk of consumer image archiving -
they're arguably already doing it.  There are a couple of problems
with them, though; fundamentally, photo-sharing services require
one to give the service the use of your images, not something that
commercial photographer or artist is likely to agree to.

The other problem I personally have is that I generate much larger
image files than the typical consumer digital camera and have
limited upload bandwidth unless I'm willing to pay a lot more on
a monthly basis.

Clearly, the photo-sharing services have the infrastructure in
place to offer a different tier of service which does not require
sharing of images, probably for a fee.  I haven't investigated;
perhaps such services are already available?

Dana