Digital emulation, preservation or migration

June 22, 2000 - 11:18am — Blake

R Hadden Writes :

\"Risk Management of Digital Information: A File Format Investigation.\" by Gregory W. Lawrence et al. It is impossible today to guarantee the longevity and legibility of digital information for even one human generation. The choices are: to physically preserve the format, to emulate the data, or to migrate the digital data. All these choices have risks.

You can see the PDF file at Clir.orgIn 1998 the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) asked Cornell University to study the risk management for migrating several different common file formats. This report is the result of their studies, and is a practical guide to assess the risks associated with migrating electronic files in various formats. File migration is prone to generating errors, and this report provides practical tools to quantify these risks.

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub93/pub93.pdf