The Digital Preservation Management reading really caught my attention this week. I started off with the quiz and it told me that not only should I read this but I should do their workshop as well (not in a failing sort of way but as in I could really use this in a museum setting) and I have to agree. With the goal of digitizing over 40,000 slides in the next two years, it is extremely important that I keep up to date with current technologies. It would awful if after all that work I found out that what I saved the photos on was no longer relevant to technologies. I definitely plan on bringing this to my director’s attention to see if we can either actually do the workshop or find something compatible to it to bring us up to speed on available technologies.
Some highlights in the reading for me were the terms and concepts page as well as the obsolescence and physical threats page. The terms and concepts were helpful for obvious reasons: it defined key terms that I did not know. It also brought me up to speed on what current technologies there are. The obsolescence page was helpful in showing me what to do and what not to do. As we have talked about in class before, new technologies in a small museum is not always an option and it is really easy to continue to use obsolete technologies because there is no choice. I hope that with the photos my Museum will be able to maintain it so that they never become obsolete because they are such an important part of the collection.
