Tuesday 3 September 2013

The Shape of Things to Come?


I got this today:
alert alert-danger Server outage:
The Scheme's principal server had an operating system failure following the move to a new facility. This version has been hastily bought online using a new server and has some experimental features. Some images may be missing whilst the backup copies images across from Amazon's S3 service. You will need to reset your password the first time you login Updates can be found via our Twitter and Facebook pages. I apologise that this downtime lasted for so long. - Dan" 

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    You searched for:
    • Material: Gold
    • County: LINCOLNSHIRE
    • Object type: COIN HOARD
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Well, actually I clicked on a link that was supposed to go to the 2008 Stixwould hoard, but does not. The PAS database was down from Friday through to Monday. I have every confidence that Dan Pett will get it up and running, he's brilliant at that sort of thing. But 50 years from now, he'll be pushing up the daiseys, but there will - we assume - still be a need for these data to be archivised, and that archive maintained.  So what then? Or is this a database that will only exist for a few decades and then fade away with our generation and its input to it, leaving all those holes in the archaeological record wholly unmitigated damage? There is no way to guarantee that this database will be maintained as such, is there? Only by it being taken over by somebody else, but then the cycle begins again.

2 comments:

Alan S. said...

I think they call it 'Preservation by Record'? I wrote a short piece about it here; http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/preservation-by-record-but-for-how-long/

Paul Barford said...

Thanks for that, yes, that's what they call it, but it is hardly any kind of "preservation" worthy of the name when the record is so fragile and liable to be broken the moment Dan Pett steps away.

 
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