Backup tapes of Indology archives

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, N. Ganesan wrote:

> Is there a procedure to back up all the Indology archives?
> It will be very valuable, say after 50 years, to check on
> many debates, references, themes, ideas, speculations etc.,

I agree completely with your general sentiment; there are several
PhDs-worth of sociology, history of scholarship, historiography, etc., in
the INDOLOGY archive.  However, there is no medium in existence which will
still be readable in 50 years.  (Or, at least, for which reading
technology can be guaranteed still to be available.)  So having data on an
active hard disc, with a good local periodic backup routine, is probably
the best that one can do at present.

> Also, In the Indology archives, there are lot of unreadable
> scribble emanating from the Microsoft Attachment problem.

The amount of space these consume is negligible from the point of view of
storage, and not worth the effort necessary to find and delete them.

Thank you for your suggestions.

All the best,
Dominik

--
Dr Dominik Wujastyk,                FAX:        +44 171 611 8545
Wellcome Institute for              URL:        http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/
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