Re: [TUHS] PL/I stuff - was: Book Recommendation

I have a relative who is an archivist, the sister-discipline to librarians (Mike Lesk was at heart I think, in the library most the time time. I say this, because I always think about Mike when the topic of data and libraries comes up. He was nice to me at UCL and I have a soft spot for anyone who was nice to me.) Anyway, She tells me that the primary role of archivists is to help people throw things away. As a (sometime) scientist in (mostly) data, I know I have serial hoarding disease. But I also know that NASA and other agencies only found some things, by going back into the stacks to re-read old tapes, without the "noise reduction filter" which had taken signal out. So I feel your pain, loosing the tapes will have hurt. But I also know along the path in time, Somebody had a role to play, curating the data into the modern era. You're not alone, the BBC had this problem in spades, re-using Umatic tape to save money. Ephemeral content which turns out to be in some cases the probably only copy of what is data to us now, but was junk to them then. -G