It takes a lot more space than bits on a hard drive. I am curious though why libraries didn't have their microfilm digitized before getting rid of it. Maybe a case of thinking "well it must be online somewhere" and that's what everyone thought...
As I surf more and more of the old internet and broken links though, I’m realizing how precious that microfiche and film is.
I assume we are about to get a big lesson in this with Imgur removing all nsfw images and images uploaded without a user account.
I’m realizing the web isn’t a static thing at all, it’s just some wriggling ever-evolving snake we are experiencing and riding and watching the tail disappear and a new head born continuously. “You can’t step your foot in the same internet twice.”
The internet is big enough and has been around for long enough where both complete loss and complete preservation exists. I am young enough to where I "discovered" the existance of news groups within the last year. More accurately, I discovered the google groups frontend to newsgroups. It's fascinating seeing discussions about things I find interesting from before I was born. Someone has cataloged and uploaded various K-mart, a now bankrupt retail chain, in-store tapes to archive.org . There's traing videos and tapes, and reel to reels going all the way back to 1947. I enjoy listening to the christmas mixes. The internet is not static, but with proper management and motivations, data will stay forever. My local library had a microfiche machine that they took out last year, I wish I got to try it before they did but for the last few years, there was a "out of order" sign on it. It wasn't really out of order, they just didn't want people to touch it.
On the other hand, myspace profiles and Cartoon Network shows are already good examples of losing data. Cartoon Network is especially unfortunate because some of the shows weren't ripped, so illegitimate sources won't help you obtain them. The creators of other shows publicly tweeted how they had to pirate their own show for their kids, because it wasn't available to stream.
I believe the internet is good, but I have also been realizing that I made bad assumptions about how companies will handle data.
I mean, big media companies (e.g. Disney or Nintendo) specifically seem to believe that copyright should give them the right to basically rewrite their own history however they please - e.g. by "un-publishing" old movies or shows when they would conflict with a planned re-release of the same franchise.
That's a desire that IMO directly conflicts with society's desire to keep history. So as long as we have powerful groups that specifically want the ability to erase parts of history, historians will have a bad time.
> I am young enough to where I "discovered" the existance of news groups within the last year.
I am sorry to report to you that even chunks of Usenet are missing. Specifically, significant chunks between the UTzoo archive and DejaNews are just... gone? There are posts, for instance, to alt.video.laserdisc to which I can find only replies and not the OP.
Usenet was never completely saved. https://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ (And it's in relatively good shape compared to BBS messages, the vast bulk of which are long gone.) And who knows what has been lost since Dejanews given that Google did its usual lost interest in thing.
Thank you for posting the Kmart tape. I pressed play and I thought it wasn't working and hopped in the shower. Then it started playing and I was awash with Nostalgia and I was in Kmart at Christmas in 1990 again. Thank you.
That's... horrible. How much does it take to keep streaming the show you already paid to develop? It seems malicious to downright delete it and remove it from the digital libraries of people who purchased the show.
I hate corporate decisions. If this show lives on, it will be thanks to piracy. Thank the pirates!
Most certainly a case of "ain't got no money for that".
Digitizing large archives is pretty labor intensive, plus you need to get specialized hardware and software. All that for stuff only a small minority of people care about, and while funding is getting reduced...
As someone who has been involved in digitizing a college newspaper in the past, it takes quite a bit of effort and well >$10K even with a lot of volunteer labor. (Which may not sound like a lot of money but actually is for a volunteer organization in many cases.) And it's not just digitizing. It's having enough metadata that the result is useful to anyone other than the hardest core historian.
I'm not confident in this, but: if microfilm/fiche is anything like ordinary film, it's somewhat annoying and costly to archive: the film itself physically degrades ("vinegar syndrome"[1]) and might be hazardous to store in bulk (depending on the age and type of film stock).
(This isn't to say that it should be thrown out, but that the first step to archiving is to enumerate and cover the costs.)
Microfilm doesn't use cellulose acetate, and is stable for centuries with minor storage requirements (room temperature, low humidity)-- the same that are required by books.
How widely it was used prior to that time, and what filmstock selection practices specific institutions followed I don't know, though I suspect these may have varied.
As for current polyester filmstock:
Black-and-white polyester film has a life expectancy of 500+ years under proper storage conditions.
It’s one thing to keep a single copy for all of society locked up in a box. But having it retrievable means staff, and maybe in a bunch of places if you want local access.