Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia

In the traditional software world, the only way something is going to be around forever is if it's going to be used all that time -- for example, a financial application which is in constant use needs to be constantly up. But archival digital preservation has a very different sense of permanence.

Word. I am just now learning the pain of trying to ask software vendors if their system has provisions for exporting files for back-up purposes. "It only saves in proprietary formats" = bad answer. (I won't even start on the unsuccessful attempts to get the people whose files I'm supposed to be organizing onboard with records management software as well as document management software. "But this application does all sorts of things we don't need." Me: "Most applications that provide for version control have RM features. Scheduling is good! Scheduling would mean that four-year-old files of news clippings aren't cluttering up every corner of your shared drive!").