REFORMATING

billy graham center archives
2007 annual report

“This is a fine way of behaving! The orchardists keep breaking into the date storehouse and taking dates, and you yourselves cover it up time and again and do not report to me. I am sending you herewith this letter of mine. Bring those men to me–after they have paid for the dates!” From Letters from Mesopotamia, translated and edited by A. Leo Oppenheim, 1967.

Samas-nasir, governor of Larsa in Mesopoamia, wrote that Sin-pilah and others approximately 4,000 years ago. He wrote on a clay tablet which then hardened. The tablet still exists and can be read, to anyone who knows the language with great ease.

Information currently recorded digitally is not so secure or likely to last. Ordinary CDs and DVDs may preserve at least some of their contents for ten to fifteen years. Current hard drives will probably last longer but not a great deal longer.

Why then digitize any archival documents (“documents” including audio and moving image recordings, as well as paper records and photos)? One reason is that while digitization is not recommended for preservation, it is a great tool for use and access. Vast amounts of material can be stored and sent in very small spaces. Another reason is that in the case of analog audio tape, video tape, and even film, the original medium is not likely to last much longer. Having the same document in at least two different formats is one strategy to prolong the documents life. There is also the fact that equipment for playing older formats of tapes, films, phonograph records are often no longer manufactured and can be prohibitively expensive to maintain.

So, while the information technology industry is starting to wrestle with the long term preservation of electronic records (“long” meaning something more permanent than ten years), the BGC Archives is every year reformatting some of its materials on a selected basis, either in-house or through outside contractors. Throughout the year, the Archives staff digitized (and stored in multiple copies) 276 audio recordings and twelve films. They hope to digitize a similar sampling in 2008.

Microfilm is another example of a reformatting method. A properly prepared film can last half a millennium and more. And the equipment needed to read microfilm is much simpler than that required for, say, a CD. A microfilm reader needs only the ability to magnify and illuminate. Microfilm also increase the usability of material. Dozens of reels of collections the Archives staff has microfilmed were sent out to other libraries around the world during the year. The Archives also added to its microfilm. Portions of Collection 81, the records of Africa Inland Mission were filmed, as well as a scrapbook belonging to James Stewart (see the accession page)