Library Of Congress Racing To Preserve Vast CD Collection

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The Library Of Congress plans to test its CD collection every three to five years? I think they would be better off ripping CDs now while the data can still be salvaged. :eek:

"We'd love to be able to say, 'These particular discs, or this specific time period, these are the absolute ones at risk,'" France said. "We don't know how people have stored or used them over time. So all of those factors, the use, the handling, the environment, all come into play in terms of the longevity."
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ktk said:
who needs enemies when you have retards like this?
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lol... No kidding... how can testing every 3 years be cheaper then storing digitally.

I suppose enterprise solutions are a bit more expensive then buying 4TB drives on amazon.
 
They probably are keeping the works on those CDs stored digitally. If I'm not mistaken, they have also transferred vinyls to a digital format. But they want to preserve the medium that the works were distributed on for posterity. In other words, they're doing it for the children ;).
 
Is Taylor Swift secretly fraternizing with Steve Lynch's descendants?

Stupid Upwardly headline on the linked article. If you read it, it has less to do with "racing" to preserve CDs as about testing CDs for longevity in retaining data. Thought this would have been figured out a long time ago.. remember reading about "archival" CDs in the late 1990s.. and CDs were marketed, especially in the beginning, as being nearly indestructible.

I remember cartoons from a compact-only review magazine that I subscribed during the first couple of years of it's existence (it was like Stereo Review/High Fidelity/Audio but only for compact disc.. thought it was called "Compact Disc Review" but can't find any Internet evidence of it) that showed how "indestructible" CDs were.. one showed a guy throwing CDs like a frisbee for his dog to catch). Funny how that wasn't even close to the reality!!

CDs are susceptible to damage during handling and from environmental exposure. Pits are much closer to the label side of a disc, enabling defects and contaminants on the clear side to be out of focus during playback. Consequently, CDs are more likely to suffer damage on the label side of the disc. Scratches on the clear side can be repaired by refilling them with similar refractive plastic, or by careful polishing. The edges of CDs are sometimes incompletely sealed, allowing gases and liquids to corrode the metal reflective layer and to interfere with the focus of the laser on the pits.[33] The fungus Geotrichum candidum, found in Belize, has been found to consume the polycarbonate plastic and aluminium found in CDs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_discs
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Just buy these CDs.. $2 a piece.. think the Government can afford it..

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and follow Patrick Norton's 3-2-1 advice.. 3 backups, 2 different media, and 1 offsite!! Problem solved!!
 
I imagine there is either/or or and using existing media (do not know if copyright is involved in copying) or/and EMP "safe" storage.
Isn't there a difference between personal copies and institutional?
 
The problem with M-Disc..
will there be any Blu-Ray players in the year 2525..
if man has a Blu-Ray drive..
if woman can survive..
 
Sure sounds like they're talking mostly about CDRs. Who puts stickers on a pressed CD? I've got CDs from the mid 80's and they're all fine. CDRs, OTOH, don't do well in the heat and it definitely depends who made them. Most of my CDRs are Taiyo Yuden. That said, I also rip all my music to a server.
 
Yeah, some people are forgetting the historical significance of the medium. Think of all those CD's from the 90's! Now if it's some of the crap contemporary pop playing right now, then yes, let that stuff just sit on a cheap drive (that's prone to failure might I add).
 
timta2 said:
We must have different ideas of what constitutes "cheap as shit".
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You can probably fit about 15,000 music CDs on a 6TB drive. Divide $300 by 15,000, and the cost is only 2 cents per CD. So even with an inefficient RAID 1 setup, it's only 4 cents worth of HD space to keep a CD backed up.
 
Pretty sure LOC would use Raid 5 or 6, but still relatively cheap. Nevertheless, I suspect they want to keep copies on the original medium if at all possible. With that said, I don't believe they need to recheck CD's that often. Unless people are handling these disks regularly, I'd be shocked if the CD's are deteriorating. They'll certainly last longer than an array of HDs.
 
I think they are worried about preserving the original medium. They probably have (or someone else does) the data stored in a digital archive elsewhere.
 
timta2 said:
We must have different ideas of what constitutes "cheap as shit".
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$200 for 6TB is cheap as shit. I'd buy 50 of them for $10K, put em in RAID6, and you've got 288TB of storage, which is like four hundred million CDs.
 
Even if the CDs are never being handled they still do degrade and tarnish over time as the layers separate naturally and the chemicals become unstable, especially with exposure to UV and humidity.

If they are original CDs using something like cyanine dye (green CDs) they can actually become useless in just a few years. Silver and gold are much better (inert materials being much more resistant to oxidation) with up to 100 years for gold, but probably way too expensive considering the volume. The dark blue ones (azo) are seemingly the best for longevity and cost, I'm guessing they're using that, if the original CD-Rs have crumbled.

But even those won't last the several centuries which a book can, so someone will need to constantly keep transferring the data to fresh media to maintain it. That's got to be expensive when they have the 500,000 of them as they currently do.
 
Jalidi said:
But even those won't last the several centuries which a book can, so someone will need to constantly keep transferring the data to fresh media to maintain it. That's got to be expensive when they have the 500,000 of them as they currently do.
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Not hardly, data prices are plummeting. 1s and 0s are 1s and 0s, it doesn't need to be on CDs anymore than floppy disk data has to be on floppies. As was said, you buy around 50 hard drives, and replace them as they fail with fewer and fewer drives needed as time goes on.

After all, it won't be long until we have 20TB drives.
 
If copyright laws weren't so long, the common people could help protect the artistic creation.

But I agree with some here that this is not about simply ripping the music. You have the packaging art itself. Remember those CD's from the 80's that had the AAD/DDD SPARS codes on them?
 
Jalidi said:
Even if the CDs are never being handled they still do degrade and tarnish over time as the layers separate naturally and the chemicals become unstable, especially with exposure to UV and humidity.
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Jalidi, it's the library of congress, not a car or fishing camp. All those disks are in temperature controlled rooms.

Jalidi said:
If they are original CDs using something like cyanine dye (green CDs) they can actually become useless in just a few years. Silver and gold are much better (inert materials being much more resistant to oxidation) with up to 100 years for gold, but probably way too expensive considering the volume. The dark blue ones (azo) are seemingly the best for longevity and cost, I'm guessing they're using that, if the original CD-Rs have crumbled.
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You're describing CDRs, not CDs. Aside from super cheap crap CDRs and CD's left unprotected (in anyway) sitting in my car for months in the summer, all of my CDRs from 17 years ago still work. The only real CD i've ever had stop working was scratched up. I probably could have fixed it, but I just bought a used copy to replace it for 3 bucks.

Most, if not all, of the music that the LoC has is likely on CD, vinyl or some other earlier medium.

Nevertheless, they should back everything up to multiple HD's (I'm sure they have), DAT and perhaps make hard copies where applicable (i.e. maps) Technically they could make hard copies of software and music (though you'd need something to scan the wave form in if the drives and CD's died).
 
Ducman69 said:
Not hardly, data prices are plummeting. 1s and 0s are 1s and 0s, it doesn't need to be on CDs anymore than floppy disk data has to be on floppies. As was said, you buy around 50 hard drives, and replace them as they fail with fewer and fewer drives needed as time goes on.

After all, it won't be long until we have 20TB drives.
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Bits get corrupted and not everything is in accurip (unfortunately).
 
westrock2000 said:
If copyright laws weren't so long, the common people could help protect the artistic creation.

But I agree with some here that this is not about simply ripping the music. You have the packaging art itself. Remember those CD's from the 80's that had the AAD/DDD SPARS codes on them?
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I remember when the Sega Genesis's CD-ROM accessory, Sega CD, was released, in 1992, and I started reading articles about it in electronic gaming magazines describing how some CDs from the 80s had code written on them that Sega CD could read and use to display hidden graphics, lyrics, credits, and so on. I specifically recall Talking Heads being among the bands who had released a CD with such a feature.

I just spent a little time researching online, and learned that the format was called CD+G. An enthusiast compiled a list of music CDs with the embedded code, with a link to a Youtube page that has most of the CD+G videos!
 
This is totally something the government does for us because we can't do it ourselves.
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
The problem with M-Disc..
will there be any Blu-Ray players in the year 2525..
if man has a Blu-Ray drive..
if woman can survive..
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FINALLY.. after 2.5 years of waiting.. I finally got a LIKE for my comment!! My day has been made!! Thanks for recognizing my brillance tungt88!! ;)
 
Armenius said:
They probably are keeping the works on those CDs stored digitally. If I'm not mistaken, they have also transferred vinyls to a digital format. But they want to preserve the medium that the works were distributed on for posterity. In other words, they're doing it for the children ;).
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Albums are analog and it's not 100% a digital transfer will re-create the intended effect. Much of Album music was made for the reality of how it sounded on playback. A lot of music done in Mono fell apart with re-mastered for stereo because certain effects or instrument were now more identifiably separate. This happened again when remastered for 5.x. And it it also happened when Record tracks were remastered for CD. The lesser quality affected perceptions. The rain effect on 'Riders on the Storm' sounds like rain to me. From the CD, it sound like static to me.

Records made counted on flaws in the record player to sound correct. Digital, though, doesn't matter because there is a standardized break between the recording and playback. There is a reason to save vinyl but no reason to save CD's. Bureaucratic policy applied when it no longer matters.
 
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Insula Gilliganis said:
FINALLY.. after 2.5 years of waiting.. I finally got a LIKE for my comment!! My day has been made!! Thanks for recognizing my brillance tungt88!! ;)
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He probably meant to hit the /!\ Report button and mis-clicked. Get back in your shed or there will be no bone scraps for your dinner tonight!
 
jpm100 said:
Armenius said:
They probably are keeping the works on those CDs stored digitally. If I'm not mistaken, they have also transferred vinyls to a digital format. But they want to preserve the medium that the works were distributed on for posterity. In other words, they're doing it for the children ;).
Click to expand...
Albums are analog and it's not 100% a digital transfer will re-create the intended effect. Much of Album music was made for the reality of how it sounded on playback. A lot of music done in Mono fell apart with re-mastered for stereo because certain effects or instrument were now more identifiably separate. This happened again when remastered for 5.x. And it it also happened when Record tracks were remastered for CD. The lesser quality affected perceptions. The rain effect on 'Riders on the Storm' sounds like rain to me. From the CD, it sound like static to me.

Records made counted on flaws in the record player to sound correct. Digital, though, doesn't matter because there is a standardized break between the recording and playback. There is a reason to save vinyl but no reason to save CD's. Bureaucratic policy applied when it no longer matters.
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Ohai, 2.5-year-ago me.
 
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