From: "Madeleine Yeh" <myeh at wap.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Give Me That Old Time Technology!
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Cc: Wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:49:35 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

   These were list of potential lecture/workshop topics.
  I don't really need practical advice now.
I would like to have a lecture on  the current practice
 at LoC.  My last reports are decades old.
   Would unbaked tablets have kept as well as the Sumerian
ones?  Baked clay is pottery and nearly indestructible.
  Dry clay is just dirt waiting for rain and a grass seed
to destroy it.  I don't know anything and am just shooting
off my mouth.
   Will there be jpeg twenty years from now?

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:42:48 -0700 (PDT)
  Tamar Lindsay <dicconf at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- On Mon, 8/23/10, Madeleine Yeh <myeh at wap.org> wrote:
>
>> If we are putting up wish lists about archives how
>> about going backwards too
>> A)  Preserving paper technology with reports on
>> Library of Congress activity
>
> There are books about that... AIUI the LoC has
> a chemical dip method to preserve fragile paper books.
>
>> B)  Development of the book with hands on
>> workshop crafts
>> C)  How to make and bake your own clay tablet or
>> writing in the Sumerian age.
>
> Most Sumerian tablets weren't baked, as it was dry
> enough to preserve them. Some were baked in house
> fires.
>
>> Truly it would be nice to see the electronic age and its
>> various unreadable forms.
>> I have tapes of old directories but not the machinery to
>> read them.
>
> Probably need the software as well.
>
>> I still have some original 3.5 inch floppies and no idea
>> how to look at them.
>
> Program? A good word processing program ought to at
>least
> read the directory; there are USB 3.5 floppy readers for
> access to the floppy.
>
>> I never really thought about different work processing
>> programs, but how do picture and music programs last?
>
> Music I imagine fails as fast as word programs.
> Pictures are usually in something fairly common like
> jpg etc, and there are picture programs that will
> convert format (some loss as usual).  If you can get
> it on screen, things like PaintShop or PhotoShop can
> capture it in whatever modern format you want.
>
> =Tamar
> talk yes, do, no, alas.
>