Take a few moments and browse this gallery from the Library of Congress. Tasked with the job of preserving the roughly 150 million historical items, they are constantly developing new methods using bleeding edge technology. There is an odd balance of some of the oldest documents in tandem with some of the newest technology evident in these pictures. From doing spectral scans of ancient books to laser mapping warped phonographs, everything must be preserved and documented.
First you see the minute care for old items, then you see the incoming bin and it looks like a garbage truck just dumped it all in, makes you wonder if in 75 years they will be all careful and wearing cotton gloves with what’s now tossed about. or if plastic cases will remain as worthless as they are now.
I would LOVE to work there. :-)
Would it kill them to use a bit of compression? Or realize that I *MAY* not want to download a 100K image!?
@Real Dick
Well they can’t use compression for storing actual data, but for downloads it would come in hands, I just wish they would digitize all their movies, and RCA Videodiscs, love it!
“Never take a sample; be completely nondestructive…”
Thank you.
Another way Fed. tax dollars are at work. What surprised me is he amount of contemporary material that the LoC is collecting/archiving. Digital streams from the broadcast satellites, internet radio stations
I guess working there would be the best thing ever. Its just such an honest work and everyone benefits from the items they restore because these will increase our knowledge about former social, psychological and deomestic issues etc.