Gaming the Archives

Warning: I rant and ramble a bit in this one. It should have probably been two different blogs.

Is it just me or has archives-flavored news reporting finally figured out what gamers have known for years now? IF THE MEDIA IS TOO OLD, YOU CAN’T USE IT.

Good grief. When I was five, I played games on my parents’ computer using 3.5 inch floppy disks (remember those?). There is no way I could conceivably play them in their original format for two reasons: A) my current computer does not have a floppy disk reader and B) floppy disks have an average lifespan of less than ten years. There’s all kinds of quibbles that could be brought up from that sentence alone and I’ll address them in a minute, but right now let’s all take a deep breath and agree: the digital house has been burning for the past 40 years AT THE VERY LEAST and it’s a bit late to try and save all the furniture.

Feel better?

Now, let’s talk about what I said earlier:

1) “…in their original format…” A file format that is over twenty years old serves a reminder of the software wastelands of the personal computer’s youth. Software programs today are descended from years of code and betas and while sharing some similarities as their predecessors, they are not the same thing (they’re sort of like people in that regard). It’s nutty to assume you could open up a Word 1.0 file in Word 7 and assume that it could be read perfectly OR that it could be read at all.

Don’t worry people; there are options.

For years now, gamers playing around with old games have been either desperately maintaining their Commodore 64 or finding/creating emulators. I’ll address the maintenance of old hardware in my next point; right now, let’s look at emulation. Software such as DOSBox, Fusion (for the Sega Genesis), or Stella (Atari 2600, anyone?) have been making games that were thought to be lost accessible again on the PC. The big issue for this (and emulation in general) is that it’s not really the GAME. Emulation is exactly that; it’s not the real thing, just a very, very good copy. In short, it forces people to make the choice of what’s important to them: an accurate/exact game experience that may not be repeatable at a later date (old hardware) or an accessible copy that only captures the essence of the game.

Archivists have been making this decisions in this vein for years now. When we copy a 19th century letter to give to a patron or when we scan a photograph or a map to put online, we’re telling our users: the information is what’s important, not the exact medium. Oh, you can claim different reasons for doing it: “the original’s too delicate to be handled” or “we want to have our holdings accessible to the public” but you’re doing it nonetheless. Emulation is not a foreign concept; it’s just a tool archivists have already used to get at the essence of something.

Why not then look at emulation options for the data that we’re storing? I understand the issues of data migration (the big thorn in this suggestion’s lion’s paw) but keeping things stored on failing storage media does no one any good. We’re already making these decisions for our analog materials, why not our digital?

2) “My current computer does not have a floppy disk reader.” This can be remedied very easily by either buying a floppy disk reader with a USB port or doing what my previous employer did and maintaining a “computer graveyard.” I have my own qualms about such a graveyard. Why? HARDWARE AGES AND SO DO PEOPLE. Keeping technology functioning long after its expiration date is very expensive since it becomes increasingly harder to find the parts needed to keep it running and the specialized knowledge to run/fix the older tech. For reference, I’m in my mid 20s. The earliest gaming system that I used was the Commodore 64 (which had been around for a bit before I was born). I have never used an HP-85 or a Commodore VIC-20 and honestly wouldn’t know where to start. My sister is a very smart teenager; I am, however, confident that she wouldn’t know how to prompt DOS to save her life. Running that sort of tech is no longer common knowledge and we can no longer assume that it is. Why maintain a computer graveyard at all, then?

The accuracy/essence issue.

There are times that patrons will need the original deal. One example I can think of from grad school was a certain batch of letters from the 18th century sprinkled with vinegar. Why vinegar? Because the writer was corresponding from a plague-infested area and the vinegar was viewed as a disinfectant at that time. If the patron had been given copies of the letters, he would have gotten the words, but not the whole story. Sometimes people will need to look at the exact file in order to understand the margins or the formatting of a file. This is why we maintain old technology instead of emulation. It’s important for archivists to provide the option of accuracy whenever we can. We can’t presume a patron’s motivations for using our holdings.

(Keeping with my gamer references, this is why there are computer and video game archives popping up in the US. Sometimes immersion is all that will capture your game of choice.)

3) “…average lifespan of less than ten years.” Lifespans are no more than guidelines at best. CDs have an average lifespan of about 10 years dependent on use, type, and conditions.However, I have a hard time expecting a CD-R from 1996 to open without issues, especially if it was used for audio, due to the age of the media and the expected amount of use. For example: assuming audio CD-R rotation use once a week for six months, once a month for 4.5 years, and once every six months since then, we get a number of about 75 uses. If it’s traveled in a car, it’s been exposed to extreme temperatures. Has it been stored in a sleeve or a box? Has it been dropped? You get the point. Hard drives fail, and often without warning. Computers crash. Even the most carefully stored/preserved object, analog or digital, will eventually need conservation.

Gamers handle these issues by storing their physical copies of games carefully, slipping covers on game discs, giving systems a rest, storing save files on memory cards, making backups etc. The archives field is prepared for this as well: we have needs-based assessments of our holdings, we hire conservators, we create copies, we have disaster plans…the list goes on. It’s honestly not that hard of a stretch to start applying these skills to our digital data (though time-consuming). We have to start testing the media we’re receiving as soon as we can; we have to come up with digital backups and disaster plans.

But we have the knowledge and the fundamentals. All we need to do now is build from that.

What’s the point of all this?

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned; of course we should! I’m also not stating that I have all the answers. I’m just calmly pointing out that we archivists have a lot of options to tackle this ongoing issue. Going further, maybe the issue on the archivist side of things isn’t that digital data are disappearing, but that we aren’t the ones who are choosing what is lost. We lack agency because of the ephemeral nature of the digital age and it is KILLING US because we aren’t the ones processing/weeding.

But let’s be truthful here, hasn’t that always been the lot of the archivist? I mean, no one can save what hasn’t been received. I’m working as a consultant for a church that’s been around for 150+ years. They used to have notes and other things from the founding of their parish, but lost them in a move long before I was born. Would I love to find them? Yes, and when that day happens I’ll gladly come up with a plan to organize and preserve them. Until then, I can’t afford to worry about something that may not exist anymore. We can’t save letters that we don’t receive in a manuscript collection. We can’t save photos that aren’t donated to our holdings.

WE CAN’T SAVE IT ALL.

I’m not suggesting a Battle Royale of data on a dark shelf in the back of your archives. However, we need to continue to focus on saving SOMETHING from our digital holdings instead of waiting for the perfect method of capture. Worrying instead of working is condemning files to be lost. And let’s face it, some files are GOING to be lost no matter what we do.

The house is burning, but we can still save some of our valuables.