@inproceedings{Adelstein1998_0,<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Abstract = {One of the major obstacles to the long-term preservation of electronic media is the lack of standards. Existing "industry standards" tend to be distillations of vendor responses to the imperatives of a competitive marketplace. As such, preservation is seldom a priority. Preservation of electronic media is dependent upon the permanence of the media, the hardware and the software. All three are essential for retrievability of information which is only machine readable. Permanence of the magnetic tape or optical disk media is very dependent upon the material as manufactured. Hardware availability requires that parts be obtainable when they become worn out. Consequently format obsolescence is a major consideration.
In the United States, a committee accredited by the American National Standards Institute was formed to address the subject of magnetic tape and optical disk permanence. This committee has been meeting regularly since 1989 and to date two standards have been published and several more are in progress. The first is a test method to establish the expected life of CD-ROM optical disks. Since optical disks do not undergo physical stress when used, the test method was based on an optical readout after accelerated incubation. The second standard concerns the proper storage conditions for magnetic tape. Work in progress on test methods is to determine the useful life of CD-MO and CD-R disks, and recommended storage for optical disks. A document on the care and handling of magnetic tape is in preparation.

The promise of broadly accepted standards is that institutions charged with the preservation of cultural material can embrace new technology while managing the inevitability of equipment and file format obsolescence.},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Address = {Portland, Oregon, United States},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Author = {Peter Z. Adelstein and Franziska S.  Frey},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Booktitle = {Proceedings of the IS&T, IS&T's 1998 Image Processing, Image Quality, Image Capture, Systems Conference},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Keywords = {permanence},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Month = {May},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Number = {},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Organization = {IS&T},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pages = {127--132},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Title = {New Developments on Standards for the Permanence of Electronic Media},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Url = {},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Volume = {},<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Year = {1998}}