(Harrisburg) -- Planning is underway to move the state's extensive archives - just days after the state announced its building a new facility in Harrisburg. The state says the $24 million facility will help meet the needs of a digital world. Speaking on WITF's Smart Talk, State Archivist David Carmichael says the process to preserve paper archives is pretty straightforward: control the environment where it's stored. "But when you give me a digital record to preserve, think about putting it on the shelf and coming back in a hundred years. The hardware has changed incredibly, the software to read it has changed. And so we have many different formats of records that we are going to have to preserve for hundreds of years, and that is a great, great challenge." Carmichael says he's also watching long-term costs on the new facility. "We've been hammering the fact that we need to think about long-term costs and make certain we are as cost effective as possible. I'm a taxpayer too, and so I'm always trying to save my own money," he says. It will have state-of-the-art heating and ventilation, but he says after working to put together a new archives building in his previous job in Georgia, he's learned to make sure maintenance costs will be manageable. The building on Harrisburg's 6th Street won't open for years - the earliest date predicted at this point is sometime in late-2019. Barb MizScarlettNY@aol.com

> "But when you give me a digital record to preserve, think about putting it > on the shelf and coming back in a hundred years. The hardware has changed > incredibly, the software to read it has changed. And so we have many > different formats of records that we are going to have to preserve for > hundreds of years, and that is a great, great challenge." THIS, is what happens when you don't have properly educated decision makers. Sure hardware changes, so that is an issue. Although the appropriate hardware to read whatever media you store it on could be mothballed and later retrieved to access and transfer, if that were a real concern. Or simply store the specifications on how to build the hardware. The software to read it issue is another thing entirely. It's been 20 to 30 years since GIF and jpeg formats came out. They are still in use today, and amazingly my images from the 80s are still readable on all kinds of hardware that didn't exist back then. Next up, if stored digitally, as you add new hardware you can upgrade quite easily with simple tools. Back to the software, it's just a set of instructions. Save the code for any software so it can be compiled on new hardware. You could even save it on paper. I have code from 1980, that still compiles on new hardware today. Go figure. I have code that was given to me that was written in the 50s(70+ years old). It still compiles today on hardware that wasn't even dreamed of back then. There is your almost 3/4 mark to 100 years. Sure it's primitive code by today's standards, and some of it must be run in an emulator (a virtual mainframe). I get it, that archivists aren't necessarily geeks, but that is no excuse for not asking experts before spouting off with unnecessary FUD. Lastly, only a fool in today's world would think it's ok to store something for a hundred years without checking to make sure it's still usable every few years at minimum. Furthermore, as technology progresses, you're going to have plenty of time to swap old storage media and software out for new stuff when it comes out. So worrying about a complete non-issue. Like what became of the carriage makers of the 1800s? Some switched over to making automobile bodies, and then into auto repair shops. Other's went out of business. You either adapt or stick you head in the ground. And yes, I'm going to say it. This is not rocket science. Not some magical, mysterious, black magic that can't be understood by "ordinary" people. [end rant]