Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

This is a shame, but really.."$hit happens"

Haven't these knuckleheads heard of storing photos off site, digitally? Kodak.com

?????

How.....?

It should have been in a vault....

There are new miracle devices called scanners and broadband connections.

Scan pictures, up load them to off site storage, and voila; images are cleaning-crew proof.

Such screw-ups are ridiculous, but when you get careless, stuff like this happens.

"Scan pictures, up load them to off site storage, and voila; images are cleaning-crew proof."

Unfortunately, original photographs and transparencies are much better in the long run than scans.

The cleaning lady is probably wonder why all the fuss over some photos from her grandpa's era.

Better than hi-res scans? How so? And hey, even if they're not, they'd still exist if they'd have done.

Original negs are by far the preferred long term preservation option for photos. Prints would come next. While, in theory, digitized information for photos is optimal as there is never any data loss in transferring and copying (IF done conscientiously and knowledgeably), the jury is still out, from an archival preservation perspective anyway. There's just too many variables that get in the way of ensuring they're safely kept in a viable format that remains readable over any period of time (e.g., migration, hardware issues, software issues, hardware failure, easy mutability/loss, etc.). Working with the Ontario government as an archivist for many years really highlighted the fragility of digital data period - and the records I was working with were very recent, only a decade or so old! For reliable retention of any information in digital format you need stable and consistent administration of the items, not over a year or two but decades. It's easy to say just digitize them and they'll be safe. Preservation professionals are loudly screaming otherwise.

www.labwork-bw.com

And B&W negs are the most stable of the bunch! Thanks for sharing this site Jeff. When I worked in the photo section of the Ontario Archives, the best quality stuff, IMO, were the glass plate neg collections-pristine, gorgeous B&Ws usually dating late 19th/early 20th century. If properly looked after, these images are remarkably stable. They were generally in much better shape than colour negs from 20 or 30 years ago. Beautiful shots in your gallery Jeffrey...

We regularly get in glass plates to print from. Some of them are truly amazing in their quality, both technically and aesthetically.

Sad to say, the first thought in my mind was, "was the employee able to read English?" ... and this does not come from bias, but from previous experience at a former employer: we were told to put "Basura" on trash, otherwise it (box, bag, whatever) would not be put into the trash. Of course, I felt that this was a bit ethno-unfriendly and made up signs with trash not only in Spanish, but also in Italian, German, Russian, French, and ... Cherokee.