News-Record.com

This post doesn't have anything to do with journalism, per se. It's more of an advisory.

Kevin Kelly at The Technium advises that digital storage of records -- news stories??!! -- decay. The storage medium itself can decay. Turns out that paper is much more stable over the long term than most digital media. Magnetic surfaces flake, peel, shatter. And the supposed durable CDs and DVDs aren't very stable either.

I'm thinking of the 1899 copies of The Greensboro Patriot that I have stored, of all places, under my couch -- yellowed, a bit flaky, but quite readable. An ad on the first one I looked at reads "The Patriot and The Washington Post, One year-- only $1.40." Not bad. Anyway, Kelly continues:

We don't know what the natural movage respiration cycle is for digital media yet since it is still very new, but I suspect the cycle is much shorter than we think. I would guess it is 5 years. No matter what digital format you have your precious stored on, you should expect to move it onto new media in five years -- and five years after that forever!

Move it, move it, move it.

(Thanks to Jack Lail for the tip.)