Best process and outsourcing?

[kudin888@tm.net]

I will be recommending my client to digitize, restore and archive their historical photos and documents which number about 1,000,000. What is the process, time frame and cost involved? Will be starting from scartch!
Has anyone worked with the Insight sotware (lunaimaging)? Any thoughts?
And is anyone using flatbed scanners with ICE technology?

Please advise, would appreciate it.

If the project is approved, will probably out source the restoration work as well to cut down the time frame.

[Doug Nelson]

Bluntly, I would not trust digital storage in any format to archive historical photos and documents. Or at least the only storage. I'd go for microfilm, then maybe have the microfilm digitized for easy lookup.

If you must go digital, the Mitsui gold discs are the closest thing to archival digital (but even then estimates are only in the 20-50 year range).

[Jim Conway]

Originally Posted by kudin888@tm.net

I will be recommending my client to digitize, restore and archive their historical photos and documents which number about 1,000,000. What is the process, time frame and cost involved? Will be starting from scartch!
Has anyone worked with the Insight sotware (lunaimaging)? Any thoughts?
And is anyone using flatbed scanners with ICE technology?

Please advise, would appreciate it.

If the project is approved, will probably out source the restoration work as well to cut down the time frame.

The current trend in museum work is NOT to digitize existing photos as a means of preserving them - generally the idea now is simply to catalog and save the resources and time involved to concentrate on "digitally born" images.

Most historic photos (properly cared for) will far outlast any digital media so it's now a matter of reconsidering decisions to "digitize" often made a decade ago. The reason is simple enough - money. The high maintenance costs involved in keeping digital files from going obsolete is taking funds away from preservation activities where they can be used to better advantage. . With images that start out as digital, there is little or no choice but to maintain them in some form of digital format until they prove to be of some historical value (or none at all).

Jim Conway, Conservator

[Cassidy]

We were originally quoted 100 year life on kodak cd media but after 3 years most cd's had lost their integrity, still microfische or silver hallide based technologies still reign supreme for integrity over time. It is interesting to note that whilst we are given 100 year guarantees on media, when you look at the disclaimers, you are pretty much done for. The term 'lifetime guarantee' is also subjective

[Kraellin]

there are sites where you can study the evolution and current state of cd archiving. in the 90's it was a joke to store on cd's. it's gotten a bit better since then, but i still dont personally trust cd's or dvd's for long term storage.

however, there is an alternative which i've found pretty reliable. i use remote harddrives. these are normally usb or firewire drives. they are slower than a normal harddrive, but the technology of harddrives is pretty reliable. yes, they do break down from time to time, but it's usually the motors or electronics and NOT the platter. it's very rare for a platter to ever get so damaged as to render the data un-recoverable. backups to harddrives are also easier to do than to cd's or dvd's. and with software like Retrospect and some others, it's a piece of cake to do large progressive backups which can be compressed or not. or, you can just do straight copy procedures. and, being a usb device, you can hot swap the drive in and out, thus keeping it powered off when not in use to save wear and tear. i also like the fact that i dont have to have 50 cd's or whatever the comparable amount of storage space is and that i dont have to label and organize all these cd's or dvd's.

now, a removable harddrive might seem somewhat expensive, but you can find them for around $100 u.s. for a 120 gig drive. that's not too bad for long term archiving, especially when you can compress the data.

the downside is, drives do break. they take electricity to run. platters can get corrupted, even if rare on an archive drive, but overall, so far, i prefer these to cd or dvd archiving.

Craig

[emarts]

I'm not an expert on archiving, but I'll tell you what I do. I have a large database server that my ISP set up for me. Currently it has about 1800 high res images that ar accessible over the internet by me and my clients. The ISP backs up the data on a regular basis. Also, before I upload the images I back them up on my own tape drive onto two different tapes. When a tape is full, I do a full backup again onto a new tape. Seems like overkill, but these particular images are very important to my clients. And I also get paid to maintain the database and make sure every image is accessible.