KEEPing old digital objects usable

Stephen Withers
Monday, 16 February 2009 11:30

IT Industry - Market

A three-year, €4 million European project aims to overcome the problem of digital documents becoming unreadable as older file formats and hardware disappear.

The problem of maintaining access to digital content over time is very real.

While a few formats are by luck or design demonstrating a degree of longevity (think TIFF and JPEG for images, and PDF for formatted documents), others are closely tied to particular applications.

Once that software becomes obsolete, it can be very difficult to access the information.

And a primary reason for software becoming obsolete is that it is tied to outdated hardware, or is no longer compatible with newer versions of the relevant operating system(s).

On top of that, there's the problem of media compatibility. Have you still got a 8in floppy from the Cromemco system you used back in the 1970s? A cassette tape from a 1980s Commodore 64? Or even a 3.5in floppy from a 1990s Mac?

Even if you have found a way of running the old software on current hardware and the media itself is in usable condition, you'll find it difficult to read the disk or tape.

So what's the European Community planning to do about it? Read about the KEEP project on page 2.