Ancestry Magazine

Nothing can stir up memories or bring the past to life more powerfully than a photograph. People everywhere love photographs and most of us would rank them among our most prized possessions.

For the longest time, I’ve been meaning to better organize the photos, movies, tape recordings, and videos I ‘ve collected over the years. When summer vacation freed up some of his time, I asked my grandson Ryan to help me get the project started by scanning a number of photographs that had special significance. The ultimate goal was to share them online, on CD, or on DVD with anyone who might want them.

As a by-product of the project, Ryan created a slideshow of the pictures that is now a screensaver for my computer. Not long ago, our entire family came home for a special occasion. When so many of them kept disappearing into my office for extended periods, I finally went in to see what was going on. To my delight, they had discovered the family pictures that slowly glide by when my computer has been inactive for a few minutes. Coming on screen in no predictable order are dozens of photographs of six generations of our family. The youngest grandchildren are especially excited when they see images of themselves lighting up the screen. Seeing their own faces mixed in closely with those of the older generations seems to have awakened in them a sense of family history that just doesn’t happen when we sit them down with the old photo albums.

While I’m thankful for all this exciting technology, I’m concerned at the same time. My training at the National Archives made me conscious of the fragile nature of the materials we use to capture the images and voices of those we love. My own photos, documents, and recordings are proof that there’s good reason to be concerned about the way time can erode and destroy our precious collections. Photos are fading and yellowed, and voice recordings of now deceased family members are brittle and in some cases completely garbled and useless.

Heightening my level of discomfort is the article, “Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents” by Jeff Rothenberg in the January 1995 issue of Scientific American , in which he describes an all-too-real situation. The scene he imagines takes place in the year 2045, when his grandchildren are exploring th e attic of his house and discover a letter dated 1995 and a CD-ROM. “The letter says the disk contains a document that provides the key to obtaining my fortune (as yet unearned). My grandchildren are understandably excited, but they have never before seen a CD except in old movies. Even if they can find a suitable disk drive, how will they run the software necessary to interpret what is on the disk? How can they read my obsolete digital document? This imaginary scenario reveals some fundamental problems with digital documents. Without the explanatory letter, my grandchildren would have no reason to think the disk in my attic was worth deciphering. The letter possesses the enviable quality of being readable with no machinery, tools or special knowledge beyond that of English.”

Rothenberg’s article is a sobering reminder that “although digital information is theoretically invulnerable to the ravages of time, the physical media on which it is stored is far from eternal.” He warns that stray magnetic fields, oxidation, and material decay can easily erase disks, and that the contents of most digital media evaporate long before documents that have been preserved on high quality paper.

What can we do to enjoy the latest technology to its fullest, and yet ensure the longevity of our historical photos and documents? Experts suggest that we keep ourselves informed of technological developments and to continually convert our historical records to the latest medium. Keeping in mind that I stored some information on five and a quarter-inch floppy disks not many years ago and that I can no longer read them, I’m playing it safe by keeping all my original paper copies as well as converting whatever I can to the latest gizmo that will allow me to see and read it.