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The Two Commandments

Posted by Richard in Information on 23 February 2007 with no comments

In the Preservation Business, there are surely only two things you have to remember:

1. Put things away carefully. Check them thoroughly and clean them up, if necessary, before filing them in a sensible place, in a sensible order.
2. Look at them once in a while. Take them out, dust them off, love them, understand them. If they are a bit tatty, repair them. If they are fading, make a copy. Then put them away again, carefully.

I think that’s the sum of what I’ve learned in 10 years in the Prez Biz: the best way to ensure anything is properly preserved is to follow the Two Commandments. Even a decade of high faluting deep thought about the special problems of managing digital data over the long term, hasn’t produced any results that don’t essentially boil down to one or both of the commandments.

So, next time you lose something, or find it broken, ask yourself if you’ve followed these two simple rules!