Questions on Preservation

Preservation is an interesting question given how my text was created. It started as an oral story, recorded in a video interview, and then transcribed into a Microsoft Word document with some commentary and an introduction. There has never been a physical version of my project so far, and the two separate sources are also different mediums within digital technology. The transcription is right now only saved as a Word document, and the video interview is a .mov file on my iPad; I could print out the former, but the latter would be harder to convert physically except for a medium that stores the video file, like a CD or flash drive.

For the document, I think it would be best to have a printed copy just as a back up. Paper has the potential issues of external damage, since it is physically fairly fragile, from weather (rain), biological factors (bacteria), or any other physical accident. Getting it printed in a booklet form can mitigate this, but the risk still remains. However, given that this is a fairly short document will be passed down primarily for familial enjoyment, paper’s simplicity gives it an advantage in that it would be fairly easy to preserve. So long as it is placed in a traceable place in even a minimal storage container (such as a box or drawer), it will have the same chance as surviving as any other household object. Papers have become cheaper to reproduce as well, so I could print multiple backup copies

Right now the story is preserved as a Word document, and I would have to take steps to preserve the file for myself. If my computer dies or suffers a catastrophic failure, the document could be lost forever. I could transfer the file to an external hard or flash drive, but the Word (or any other exported) file format I use  could change in the future and become potentially unusable if I don’t take steps to keep transferring it.A physical format, on the other hand, does not have to worry about a machine reading a file format; so long as I can keep the paper preserved well, a technique which has been developed over the past 500+ years and is perfectly within my means, the story will survive. I could preserve the text on some blog or other kind of texting website. While this would make the text easier to disseminate, my primary goal is still preservation. In that respect, the most pressing concern is that I have no control over the continued existence of the website. It is impossible from this point to predict how the internet could change over the next few decades, and it is uncertain which websites could potentially be lost. Internet Archive would be the most viable option for long term web preservation, since the snapshot could capture the text without issue, but I’m not sure if they would accept what is essentially a family vanity project. Paper gives me more control over the preservation of the text with techniques that have been refined through many centuries, so I feel much more confident in its survival through that form.   

The video presents a bigger challenge. Like with the Word document, there is no guarantee that the .mov file format will stay the same going forwards or that it will not become obsolete. The video could potentially be uploaded to a hosting site like YouTube for posterity, but even its future is not necessarily guaranteed. Putting it on to a physical drive runs the same risk as the Word document of a file format becoming unusably obsolete if I do not make care to covert it. Additionally, the video is about 39 minutes long and takes up almost a GB in its current state. The large size makes it cumbersome to transfer it in a lossless form between mediums or to hosting sites. However, I don’t have the access to convert it to something more permanent like film or videotape at the moment. For now, I think the driver solution remains the most viable, since it remains more readily available to me and file format obsolescence could still take some time, but the future uncertainty makes it a harder medium to preserve than the transcript.

For now, I will stick with the plan of using both a physical backup copy of the interview and a flash drive for the document and video. I am aware of the imperfections of this process, specifically with the potential difficulties of the video, but at the moment it seems to be the most pragmatic and effective method for preserving this particular endeavor.