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UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals "insane" say experts
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Storing a lot of valuable paper is expensive.
Much less expensive than maintaining the digital format they're scanned into over hundreds of years, or upgrading the format each time the technology evolves. Eventually you reach a point where it's better to re-scan into the new format rather try to upgrade for the 50th time. But then you haven't maintained the originals. Under the right conditions, paper can last thousands of years.
Wait, hold on. Are you arguing that, in the long run, it's cheaper to pay rent and maintenance on facilities and personnel to caretake reams of paper than to have a bunch of PDFs on Google Drive?
Paper isn't some magical substance that doesn't need any maintenance ever. Silverfish, fire, water, and a million other things need to be actively guarded against to keep these records usable.
On the other hand, PDF has been around since 1992, and it hardly seems to be going anywhere. And even if it does, running a "PDF to NewStandard" converter on the files every 30 years or so seems unlikely to cost as much as 30yrs of rent on a physical building. And that holds true even over the course of 1000yrs. Rent's not cheap, and neither are people who maintain physical records.
Like, I'm not advocating for destroying the physical documents, but the idea that it's even remotely close to being cheaper to keep them as paper vs digitizing is an absolute fantasy.
Adobe Flash entered the chat.
Ah, yes, flash. A program that only lasted 15 years and was a platform that could execute arbitrary applications, most of which were silly video games.
A total apples to apples comparison with an open standard format for rendering static documents with hundreds of different reader implementations that's been around for a third of a century and is used by every major world government as the core standard for electronic documents. :P
Not just me. There's plenty of academic research on the subject. Here's the Library of Congress' preferred format for preservation of all types of documents. https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/index.html
I'm totally willing to bet any pdf will be unreadable in 1000 years. Low-acid paper, not only possible, but likely.
I don't think you've read your own source right. As far as I can tell that doesn't say paper is preferred anywhere. That document seems to just be saying, "if you use paper, use this, if digital, use this" for each type of data you want to store.
And while I agree they're not recommending to shred all their paper documents and scan them into PDF, they're also not recommending to print off all your electronic documents and put them into filing cabinets either. Both are acceptable formats for different things, in their opinion.
And while I agree that low acid paper isn't likely to break down over 1000 years if left alone, the odds of the building they are in burning down or getting a silverfish infestation is actually pretty decent over a 1000yr period, so I don't think the odds of them surviving is nearly as good as you think.
And also, while I agree that PDF will likely be replaced a few dozen times in the next millennium, it's also really just a glorified markdown format. Every new standard will have converters to move from the previous standard to the new. Is that work? Certainly. Is it more work than actively maintaining physical archives? No. Especially since, as PDF is the defacto standard for electronic documents for every world government, any major shift in that standard will have well support paths forward for upgrading.
And most importantly, none of your points actually addressed my core point, which was, regardless of which one is "easier" to maintain, it's clear and obvious which one is cheaper. The cost associated with maintaining large physical archives is astronomical. Buying up some cloud storage is minimal.
My hard copy birth certificate isn't doing too well even after much shorter time.
If that PDF represents a part of a curated collection, then I'd be willing to bet the data will be readable in a perfectly preserved way in a thousand years. I have been casually copying files and have nearly accidentally preserved all sorts of data that would have been tossed out decades ago if it were paper based.
The key word is curated, and applies to both paper and digital works. If neglected, either one has a risk of being lost or destroyed.
We have survivorship bias about paper records. We see a famous preserved work from a thousand years ago and declare "wow, paper lasts forever, but I lost a burned cd from not even 20 years ago, paper is obviously better". However that paper was ordered by royalty of the day and put under the curation of a Treasury as a highly valuable artifact from the moment it was created.
Far more paper records have been lost or destroyed than we even know to have existed.