I understand archivists have been burned by the many formats and
generations of magnetic tape, but CDs have now been available for
25 years, and current drives can read the earliest CDs. I expect
that 25 years from now, you will still be able to read a CD in an
easily-available drive. Wikipedia says 30 billion CDs of various
formats were sold in 2004.

The CD and DVD offer a standardized, random access format for
digital content, and hundreds of millions of people own the
devices to record in these formats. It makes sense to come up
with media for long-term storage and archiving of these formats.

We are past the 'Wild West' days of early computing. It really
makes sense to create more permanent media for these ubiquitous
drives. When I look at a faded photograph of Lincoln, I think
that if the recording medium had been digital, the photograph
would not have faded.

Brad Jensen
www.laservault.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Rothenberg [mailto:jeff@...]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:57 PM
> To: Brad Jensen
> Cc: archivists@yahoogroups.com; jeff@...
> Subject: Re: [archivists] Archival wuality dvd-R
>
>
> I have often argued that producing longer-lived storage media
> would not be cost-effective, since they will become obsolete
> before they wear out. It makes little sense to produce a
> gold or platinum CD if the format itself becomes obsolete in
> 5-10 years, as it is likely to. The things that make media
> obsolete are not their short physical lifetimes but rather
> the fact that newer media offer higher density, more
> convenient packaging, and other advantages.