[I tried to append this to the thread: What to do with old FSGW concert tapes? - but the system wouldn't allow me to. Perhaps this topic is better as a new thread.]

To introduce a fly into the ointment (or whatever) the major archives of historic magnetic media recordings seem to end up on CDs or DVDs in the - to my mind - mistaken belief that these are suitable for archiving.

I am very leary that these optical media are reliable enough to be used for important archival purposes. Unfortunately many folk are tempted to buy a stack of disks of indeterminate (and unlabelled) quality. These can last for days to years - but ot forever. Sadly the black coated discs that Fuji and Kodak (?) used to produce are not now available.

But whatever - this optical storage technology simply has not been around for long enough to test its reliability and longevity. With analogue recordings (like analogue t.v. in a poor reception area) at least you get something. With digitial once there is an error you lose the lot. Having said that Panasonic with its DVD-RAM discs do at least use error-correcting algorithms if a disc goes bad.

Some of you might be aware of Tony Barrand's huge video archive of traditional dance. This is hosted by Boston University and is completely on hard drives. He has spent many hundred (thousadns) of hours conveting analogue video into digital and then uploading the results onto the professional hard drives hosted at BU. At least these are backed up during the normal administration of the database(s) so the archive is near permanent. The database is freely available to the public via the web site.

But even the LoC admits that it has / will have a very real problem with the majority of its magnetic tape archives. This media is fragile. But then so are optical disks.

As an aside it has been opined that well stored vinyl or shallac (78s) recordings are the best for archiving. Or even b&w film.

In the above I'm not trying to belittle anyone's attempts to preserve important archival material. I am trying to do this with my own little collection of 'lost' BBC folk programmes (Folkweave etc.). But I have been researching the topic of suitable archival media for many years - and I haven't found an answer yet - apart from massive magentic hard drives regularly backed up.

Anyway I refer folk to the following web sites:

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/suttonelms/articles9.html

http://www.prestospace.org/project/deliverables/D12-5.pdf

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3940669.stm

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/kevin.j.mullarkey/docs/PCtoDVDRGuide.pdf - especially see section 6

At the end it warns about the fragility of DVD disks - and the recommendation of using DVD-RAM disks in cartridges. Also to locate CDs/DVDs from different factories and make indentical copies onto each of these. The reaso is that CDs/DVDs from different sources may have different shelf lives - for example TDK and Kodak might be sourced from the same manufacturer say in Austria, but different from Sony in Japan.

But there are hundreds of similar sites. It appears that there is BIG problem out there and DVs and CDs may not be the answer.

Good luck.