Archiving 2007

Michael Nelson and I are at Archiving 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. This is my first time attending the conference, so I’m learning a lot about archiving in general. Although I again had to leave Becky and the Bean at home, I got to see my sister last night since she lives in D.C.

The keynote speaker yesterday, Daniel Rosen from Warner Bros., gave a really interesting presentation on the incredible amount of data the movie industry is producing and needs to preserve. Approximately 780,000 hours of footage has been produced since 1890, and now that most footage is shot digitally, the amount of footage is growing exponentially. Not wanting to “be the guy who was responsible for losing the Wizard of Oz,” Rosen suggested that the responsibility for preserving the movie industry’s output was immense. From what I understood, the Rosen suggested the best way to preserve the output was to use analog medium rather than digital.

I was the final speaker on Wednesday. I presented my paper Characterization of Search Engine Caches and got some really positive feedback about lazy preservation. (My slides are here.) I also had an individual in the audience suggest it was not preservation at all; I wish I had pointed out that the Web Infrastructure supports migration and refreshing, but it didn’t occur to me when I was put on the spot. Those archivists can get really testy when you deviate from the traditional model of preservation.

I’m looking forward to Cathy Marshall’s presentation on Thursday, Evaluating Personal Archiving Strategies for Internet-based Information.