[game_preservation] Physical Archives collapsing (Example in Cologne)

[Andrew Armstrong]

A sad example (one I missed from early March - I don't check out too 
much "archive" news in my RSS feeds) from Cologne, where their 
Historical Archive of Cologne collapsed!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,611311,00.html

I guess relevant to us is the fact any fire, earthquake, collapse or 
other disaster could spell doom for a physical collection of artefacts, 
games and so forth. Makes it important to get an off site digital copy 
or scan if possible! Shame it just takes so much work (time + money) to 
do scans, and DRM (and maybe to a lesser extent, copyright laws) 
sometimes prevent digital copies of digital media.

Perhaps identifying this as one area for best practices or some form of 
archival standards is a good idea :) (Digital copies off site is another 
important one of course). Has anyone got any other examples except for 
classic ones (the Great Library of Alexandria for one) of archives or 
libraries having disasters and massive losses? I can't remember any off 
the top of my head, but for research into this area it'd be good to know 
some.

Andrew