[game_preservation] Long-Term Storage

[Jerome McDonough]

A little late, but my two bits on a couple of issues.

In terms of hardware architecture for data archives, there is no one- 
size-fits-all solution, or we wouldn't need storage architects.   
There are data archives that still keep a fair amount of material on  
off-line tape, and in low use environments serving a local community,  
that can be fine.  Increasing use generally favors disk over tape,  
and needs for frequent or large-scale migration typically favor disk  
over tape (since in large-scale migrations, your major concern is  
throughput -- you don't want a new migration to start just as your  
old one is ending, because it took so long to process all the data).   
Additional considerations that figure in are the need for geographic  
dispersion of backup copies (you Californians have your earthquakes,  
we midwesterners have our tornados), and (probably most important)  
maintenance costs for storage including equipment replacement,  
energy, and staffing.

In terms of file systems, many of us in the digital library/ 
preservation community have been tracking ZFS for some time.  Built- 
in error detection and correction and open source win big points from  
the preservation perspective, and for data archives handling large  
data files (uncompressed high quality digital video, for example),  
doing away with partition size limits is also a win.

"Dark archives" are usually operating under rules which forbid  
*public* release of information, but which do allow the archive  
itself to take necessary actions to insure the data's continuing  
viability and accessibility in the future.  So, the archive can test  
software to see if it's working, yes, but if the content is dark due  
to copyright restrictions, they can't let their users examine it,  
only staff.  As a side note, most archives accepting 'dark' material  
will want a signed donation agreement with the copyright holder  
pinning down the exact terms and conditions covering the  
accessibility of the material (a copyright holder may be willing to  
negotiate restricted access before the term of copyright is up under  
a variety of conditions), so dark materials can actually involve far  
more up-front labor on the part of the archive to accession than  
other material without the access restrictions.  In the real world,  
where archives have limited funds, this does mean that there is a  
balancing act between accepting dark material which you may think has  
high long term value and unrestricted material which may have less,  
but involves less work to acquire.

Our naval analogy here is rather fun, and I'm in complete agreement  
with Henry that instead of thinking along the lines of a battleship  
vs. 10 PT boats, the question is how do we orchestrate all of the  
elements of a 'carrier group' to effectively preserve games.  The  
game community has already done a great deal of work, without  
significant institutional support, to gather materials documenting  
games and their history and to develop tools like emulators to keep  
games accessible; small, nimble PT boats can do a lot.  The question  
for Library of Congress and other major institutions with an interest  
in archiving games is what type of infrastructure can we put in place  
that will build upon and support those efforts, and how do we go  
about doing that?  To press the analogy to the breaking point, if the  
Library of Congress builds an aircraft carrier, we don't want to see  
it swamp and sink all of the PT boats when it's launched.

On the 'what are we preserving and how are we preserving it' issue,  
*why* are we preserving it is perhaps even more fundamental.  The  
approaches one might take to preserving something as complex as a  
game could vary significantly depending on how the 'why' question is  
answered.

On Jun 30, 2008, at 6:44 PM, Captain Commando wrote:


> Big battleships also provoke the 'Death Star Syndrome', though this  

> isn't applicable to this analogy :) Well, except for the logic that  

> it costs a LOT less to build several smaller ships that combined  

> together can do the same as, if not more, damage than one big  

> battleship (also check the hard drive prices above - the largest  

> drive is more expensive). So for the cost of your Yamato, you can  

> have ten cruisers that can be just as if not more effective (the  

> only downside is you can't promote your politico-military power  

> around ten small ships!). In addition, battleships use smaller  

> vessels like cruisers and destroyers as a protection screen (same  

> with carriers, btw). These smaller ships provide support for what  

> would otherwise be holes in the defense system - one big battleship  

> cannot do it all :) (and let's not forget how important having a  

> good crew is!)

>

> Regarding OSX... Actually, I'm running NTSF drives on my computer  

> and I'm reading and writing to them. I installed a piece of  

> software that recognizes them as network drives (either that, or  

> the latest updates now support it).

>

> In terms of compatibility though, NTSF is quite high, though it's  

> proprietary. As a result, it might be best to go with a more  

> sustainable open-source model (it would be cheaper for one thing!),  

> but there's no telling how the situation is going to be ten years  

> from now, though I bet there will still be Linux support.

>

> This also brings up a question regarding the black vault  

> archives... Are you aloud to test the software to make sure it's  

> actually working? I mean, it sure would suck if, 80 years down the  

> road, they pen up the vaults and none of the games actually work!

>

> -- 

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

> "Until next time..."

> Captain Commando

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Jerome McDonough, Asst. Professor
Graduate School of Library & Information Science
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
501 E. Daniel Street, Room 202
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 244-5916
jmcdonou at uiuc.edu