(+) Preserve Your Data for Generations

Bill LeFurgy has written an interesting report about ever-changing data formats and the effect on historical studies. The case he described concerns a survey of citizen reactions to the Kennedy assassination that was conducted from November 26 through December 3, 1963, by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. The survey results were recorded on paper punch cards, which were used to input data into the mainframe computer used to tabulate study data. Summary results were then published.

When another national catastrophe struck on September 11, 2001, NORC researchers wanted to replicate the 1963 study by asking the same kinds of questions to assess public reaction. The aim was to compare how the nation responded to two very different tragedies. There was but one problem: how to read the punched cards from the 1963 study?

The old 80-column punch cards were eventually located, and a vendor was found who could read them and convert them to more modern media. The vendor reported that they “had to refurb our punched card equipment, it had been sitting around so long it got a little rusty.” In the end, all worked well and the data set was successfully migrated to a modern data format. The story has a happy ending.

This raises a question or two about your genealogy data. How are you saving it for future generations? Will today's storage media become as obsolete as punch cards? Should you save the information to a different form of media? If so, which one?