Posted December 01, 2017 09:00:02

Photo: Retro storage: Floppy discs have long since been replaced but may still hold important information. (Flickr: Chris Devers/CC0)

We usually think of digital records as accessible, up to date and easy to store.

But for the preservation staff at the State Library of Western Australia, saving this type of content has proven far trickier than simply keeping mildew away from books.

"If you think about keeping a book, what you need to do is ensure it doesn't have any mould or pests and then store it somewhere safely in the stacks where we have a climate-controlled environment," David Ong, manager for digital preservation, said.

"Digital content is much more fragile than that, specifically through obsolescence."

Photo: David Ong is the manager of digital preservation at the State Library of Western Australia (ABC Radio Perth: Lorraine Horsley)

The library, in addition to books and records, holds a large collection of digital material, some of which dates back decades and much of which is not as easy to access as, say, flipping through a book.

"The State Library is interested in collecting West Australian content of historical value, and that content can come in a range of formats from a range of places," Mr Ong said.

Format change a formidable challenge

Although it might have been safely stored on floppy discs or CD ROMs when it was created, the ability to look at digital files can and is undermined by rapid changes to formats and technology.

"There are so many different types of computers; if you think about the different operating systems, you have Mac and Windows, [those] are the main ones, and those operating systems have gone through multiple iterations, and each of those has a different piece of functionality that they bring along," Mr Ong said.

"We have seen different types of floppy discs, different sizes, there have been CDs and DVDs, and now we are transferring a lot of files over the internet.

"With any kind of digital file we need the software to be able to open it.

"The software has to run on a specific operating system which may need hardware to run.

"So unlike picking up that book off the shelf and flipping through it, I need a whole lot of bits and pieces of technology in the same place at the same time to be able to open and read a digital file."

Photo: Technology has changed so much, and so frequently, that archivists need old technology to access some digital content. (Flickr: Adrian Black/CC0)

Mr Ong said there could sometimes be a lengthy process to simply see if a single photograph was worth preserving.

And sometimes opening the file is impossible.

"Our first step would be to go back to the donor and say, 'Can you provide me with another copy?'" he explained.

In some instances, however, that will be the only copy of the file.

Detective work to unlock an old image

In one such instance Mr Ong ran an image file through two pieces of software; the first told him the file was not well formed, the second showed him lines of characters that were the raw contents of the file.

With some detective work he was able to identify where the error was, fix the broken tag and then output the file again.

But after all that effort Mr Ong discovered the image was a low-resolution scan of a photograph the library already had in the original printed format and decided not to keep the file.

Although it can be disappointing to do painstaking work for an insignificant record, Mr Ong was also assured the library had not lost anything valuable.

Photo: Perth from the air in 1934 ... Although the library has a vast archive, images from the recent past can be troublesome to preserve. (Supplied: State Library of Western Australia)

The importance of personal archiving

Mr Ong's work has fed a keen interest in taking care of his personal photographic collection and encouraging others to think about how they stored their images.

"Once you have all your photos in one spot, think about describing them at a very high level," he said.

"I have a mental picture of my kids cringing as I hand them 500,000 photographs which are labelled 001, 002, 003.

"Files that are out of context will not have any meaning at all, so any effort I can make now will make a huge difference in the future."

He also regularly backs up his images in several places.

"I have my photos on my laptop at home, I have a second copy on an external hard drive at home, and a third copy on an external hard drive that I have left at a mate's place.

"If a piece of equipment fails, or my house burns down, or someone breaks in and steals my laptop and my hard drive, I will at least have one other copy somewhere else."

Topics: library-museum-and-gallery, digital-multimedia, history, internet-culture, human-interest, perth-6000