Peter FORNARO
(University of Basel, Switzerland)
Archives and museums need a solution to conserve digital cultural heritage for future generations. Today, these institutions are relying on proprietary technology. The fast technological progression of digital equipment causes the unpredictability of the lifetime of storage systems. The aim of Peviar (Permanent Visual Archive) is the development of an easy-to-handle, technology-independent data carrier designed for archival use that can by used to store digital data without migration.
An example of a technology-independent and reliable method of storing information is human-readable symbolic code. In such a code, say, written text, information is represented as a meaningful sequence of symbols. The sequence of symbols is called data. In the case of human-readable symbols, the data can be accessed by the eye of the human observer. Inspired by the fact that important information, such as the bible, has been conserved over millenia thanks to their representation in such a form, we propose to investigate the possibility of a data carrier based on photographic and printable material of high stability, on which information of any kind can be stored as visible digital barcode. The visibility of the data allows access through any digital scanning or camera device of appropriate quality.
The available technology at the time of the future digitization and interpretation of the archived data is unknown. Thus, the complexity of information retrieval has to be simplified by a sophisticated encoding procedure, an asymmetric approach common in data compression. The suggested approach combines the positive aspects of digital data with an ultra stable medium like microfilm and produces an archival medium with an expected storage capacity of approximately up to 30 GByte on a 600 meter roll of 35mm color microfiche film.
The projects is supported by the Swiss National Foundation (SNF).
Keywords: Digital Preservation, Digital Archive, Migration, Visual Storage System