The Millennial Disc: A disc that lasts forever?

A company in Utah, named Millenniata, Inc., says they have a disc that can save content forever. "...the Millennial Disc^TM [is] a permanent archiving solution for the preservation of data, information and records for institutions, businesses, consumers and families." According to the company:

We have developed a Write Once Read Forever^TM DVD made from materials that are known to be capable of enduring over 1,000 years. Research to this point has produced optically-recorded bits with optical contrast superior to that of today’s DVD-R technology; this optical contrast will not degrade with the passage of time. Our Millennial Writer^TM uses a higher energy laser to ablate a dark glassy surface. These Millennial Discs^TM will be readable in all current DVD readers.

Only the disc and the disc writer are new technology. The discs are playable in existing CD and DVD players.

Millenniata's web site shows this graphic of the disc layers:

Looking at the web site, it doesn't seem that the company is doing mass production at this point. It would be interesting to get this technology into an organization that could give it a full testing and then report on the results. Is it the solution? Is it a solution? If not, why not?

By the way, their literature contains this information on media longevity that we all should keep in mind (no matter what media we're using):

• Magnetic Tape: 30 to 50 years
  
• Hard-Drive: 7 to 12 years
• CD/DVD (recordable): 7 to 23 years
  
• Solid state (Flash memory): 10 to 12 years

Of course, most people would dispute the fact that a CD/DVD could last 23 years. Perhaps under truly optimal conditions. I do I really think my flash drive is going to last 10 years? Perhaps if I don't lose it first!

BTW I'm always exciting when a company has a blog and even more exciting when the company really uses its blog. I hope Millenniata will use its blog more to help educate us.

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Technorati tag: Optical Storage

Report: The International Survey of Institutional Digital Repositories

The company Research and Markets Ltd. has issued a reported entitled "The International Survey of Institutional Digital Repositories (cost EUR 96). The report description says:

The study presents data from 56 institutional digital repositories from eleven countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, South Africa, India, Turkey and other countries. The 121-page study presents more than 200 tables of data and commentary and is based on data from higher education libraries and other institutions involved in institutional digital repository development.

In more than 300 tables and associated commentary the report describes norms and benchmarks for budgets, software use, manpower needs and deployment, financing, usage, marketing and other facets of the management of international digital repositories.

The report helps to answer questions such as: who contributes to the repositories and on what terms? Who uses the repositories? What do they contain and how fast are they growing, in terms of content and end use? What measures have repositories used to gain faculty and other researcher participation? How successful have these methods been? How has the repository been marketed and cataloged? What has been the financial impact? Data is broken out by size and type of institution for easier benchmarking.

The web site gives a table of contents and a short sample.

If you've never ordered a professional report before, you're first question will be "is it worth it?" Good question. EUR 96 ($138) may not be a lot of money for some organizations. And it might be what some are willing to pay for specific pieces of data. Experience has taught me that if you are willing to pay the report's cost for a few key data points, then it's worth it. For example, are they specific pages in the table of contents that you view as being "must haves"? If the answer is "yes" and you can bear the cost, then do it. If you can't see any data that you need or the cost is too much, then don't order the report. It could be that the data is actually available elsewhere (sometimes that's true) or that you can use other -- more readily available data -- as a substitute.

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Technorati tag: Digital Repositories

Survey concerning JPEG2000

David Lowe, Preservation Librarian at the University of Connecticut Libraries, is circulating a survey regarding JPEG2000. In the last year, I've learned more about JPEG2000 and blogged a bit about it. I quickly learned that some people perceived it to be an inferior format, but that indeed the standard is quite good (a testament to those who helped develop it). JPEG2000, however, may not be the first format that many programs consider. Lowe's survey hopes to help us understand if programs are considering JPEG2000 and what they are using it for. Having this solid information will be very helpful. In fact, it may help to build more trust in the format.

David Lowe's survey announcement said:

I am writing to solicit your help with a survey of library-related digital project staff regarding the implementation of the JPEG 2000 standard for digital images (specifically still images and not motion). We estimate that this task will take approximately 15 minutes of your time. It is available now at [this link].

The survey will remain open until October 31, 2008. We will post survey results via a report uploaded to our institutional repository, digitalcommons.uconn.edu. Please note that in our report, personal information from the survey will not be revealed, and any comments used will remain unattributed.

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Technorati tag: JPEG2000

Workshops by Society of American Archivists

If you are looking for a digitization-related workshop in the U.S., one place to check is the Society of American Archivists (SAA). SAA offers workshops online and various locations across the country. A list of upcoming workshops is available on their web site and you can register for them online.

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Technorati tag: Digitization

Article: One Man's Quest to Digitize and Publicize Rare Records

He's an article about a one-man digitization effort to digitized old 78 rpm records and make them available to others. Soon after the article appeared, his site received so much traffic that is was shut down by Yahoo. It then came back online and is being moved to a new hosting service. On his site, Cliff Bolling explains:

Hello, Everyone. Bad news. Jeff Goldstein from Yahoo called me today (8/27/08) and told me they don't want me to allow unlimited access to the downloadable songs on my web page. Even a few songs is too many as they are hosting a Small Business web service, not an unlimited shareware service, and I should look elsewhere for a web provider if I want to continue to allow unlimited access to the music. Apparently, it is OK to display my list and store the MP3 files on their servers, but only if I do not allow unlimited access to them.

Then he said:

GOOD NEWS! I just signed up with Lunarpages to host the music. They offer 1,500 Gb of storage and 15,000 Gb of data transfer for $6.95/month! It's going to take a few days to get things loaded and set up, but I feel real good about the music coming back.

And what about copyright concerns? The original article states:

The copyright situation surrounding some of these songs is as murky as their sound quality. But as with the music's political content, Bolling said he has yet to receive a copyright-related complaint about the recordings being online.

It sounds like Bolling is doing a reputable job. Wouldn't it be great if a digital archive stepped up to work with him and ensure that longevity of the files?

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Technorati tag: Digitization