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James Mahaffy (mahaffy@dordt.edu) Phone: 712 722-6279 Biology Department FAX : 712 722-1198 Dordt College, Sioux Center IA 51250 >>> atleo@sandia.gov 10/24/01 05:59PM >>> Hey folks, before we rush to become totally digital, think about this. We can still take beautiful specimen photographs with a 50 yr. old camera (or and even older one), but we usually cannot read media (tapes, diskettes, whatever) that are more than 4 or 5 years old. I have been using computers since 1981, and have many types and styles of electronic recorded data that I cannot read without a great deal of cost or effort (if at all). Upgrades and changes in data format, hardware, and software, make electronic media storage obsolete rapidly. Have you upgraded your computer hardware lately? My current computer will not read a large floppy or a small low density or double density floppy. Some of the computers in our offices have no floppy drives at all. The efficiency and editing capabilities of digital cameras are impressive, but what do you do when the format/hardware/software changes make your equipment unusable and your data unavailable? My vote is to continue to use the "old-fashioned" optical camera for archive photographs. Then, at least, a researcher will be able to look at the photographs 15 years from now. Sandy Leo No question this is a problem. I have a great cd disk (large kind) of the cell and that technology is going. However, even film can change. Most of us could not read glass negatives very well and I suspect the trend is toward digital. Still I will hate to see the day it becomes difficult to buy 35 mm film and that day seems to be coming. Just look at how hard it is to find slide film. Yet it is MUCH easier and more compact to store my palynological negatives in a binvder than lot of space on a hard drive.
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