Jim, would you mind sharing your source for the information you provide
below concerning the life expectancy of CD/DVD as a storage
medium?  You state that the life expectancy is, at best, 35 years.
I would appreciate your providing the source for that information.

Jude

Jude Edminster
CPR 324
English Department
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida
(813) 238-1638
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**************************

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

                                        -L.P. Hartly


On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Jim Beaven wrote:

>  "(3) FORMAT MIGRATION
>  The Library shares with the University, the responsibility of
>  guaranteeing that ETDs will be available to researchers both inside
>  and outside of the academic community. To keep ETDs reader-friendly and to
>  retain full access will mean migrating the current file
>  formats to new, standard formats not yet known."
> http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/archive.html
>
>  Without having a paper copy Purdue will have to make such a guarantee
>  with no way of knowing the cost in dollars and time that it will entail.
>  Reflecting on the history of library funding, how can we make such a
>  guarantee?  Not only will we see new standards as yet unknown
>  that will replace .tif, .wav, .mpeg, .jpg, .gif, .pdf and other
>  current formats, but we will see breakdown of the current storage
>  media analogous to the deterioration of acid-based papers.  At
>  best, the lifespan of a CD/DVD is 35 years.  I, personally, doubt that
>  we will be using CD/DVD in ten years.  So not only will the T/Ds need be
>  migrated to new software, but to new storage media as well.
>  Will we then become dependent on a commercial company (possibly a
>  monopolistic one with monopolistic pricing schemes) just so we can access
>  our own T/Ds?  Will we be in some group of libraries needing to pay
>  constantly higher costs to migrate each generation of T/D storage?
>
>
>  "This will be done through the cooperative efforts of the library (who
>  maintains the submission software, the database of ETDs, and the secure
>  archive) and University computing expertise."
> http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/archive.html
>
>  I would like to address Security and other issues in a different post.
>
>  "Formats recommended for ETDs that may need to be converted to new
>  standards in the future:"
>  http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/archive.html
>
>  This could be a very high price to pay.
>
> James Beaven
> Librarian Assistant V
> Special Collections, Archives, and Thesis Deposit
> Purdue University
> http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~jbev
>