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Hallo again to all. Probably the most common emails that we receive here at Anglicans Online (other than offers to sell us Viagra and fake bulletins from faraway banks urging us to 'click here') are requests for information from the past. A writer asks if we can help her find a priest who changed her life 50 years ago. Another writer asks if we can find his baptism records. Do we know what happened to a certain church in Canada? Do we know why a certain diocese changed its name in 1957? We get a steady stream of these questions, and we do our best either to answer them or to refer the writer to a more likely source for that information. Most of these writers assume that we have full access to all of the records kept by every Anglican parish in the world.
Those who have studied archives, archiving, records retention, and preservation have learned about acid-free paper, controlled humidity, fireproof storage boxes, document repair, and book rebinding. If you or your organization have been through a tragedy, you may have learned how to dry wet paper, clean smoke-damaged materials, or make copies of fire-damaged images. Physical records are tough, and if you learn about and follow best practices for materials, handling, and storage conditions, they can be even tougher. One time a few years ago after a major natural disaster that damaged a lot of libraries, we recall visiting a restoration site and talking to the staff who were working full time, week after week, on cleaning water- and fire-damaged books. One of those restoration technicians told us that she couldn't answer a question we had asked because the disk had crashed on the computer in her workspace and she had lost that information. We didn't want to be rude to a person doing such heroic work for such low wages, but we wanted to say 'Can't you see that the information in your computer needs to be conserved and preserved and kept safe, just like these books?'
The issue of long-term preservation of computer data is at the forefront of digital photography right now. Film might have its faults, but there are many examples of film, properly developed and properly stored, having lasted 100 years. Experts argue about the best techniques for preserving digital data, but only time will tell if they are right. It's been our experience that most people don't even take the simple precautions that ensure their data will last through a disk failure, by making backup copies. It's rather pointless to offer advice on the best long-term care of your backup copies when you aren't actually making any. Nevertheless, we know that readers of Anglicans Online are all above average in intelligence and virtue, and are faithful about making periodic backup copies. So we shall offer you some advice. We are actually trained experts in media retention and preservation methods. There's not enough space here to teach you what we know, but we think that if we tell you what we do, right now, to preserve our data, that it could be useful. Here is how we preserve our own electronic data for travel through time and space:
We hope that the information that we gather and write is worth keeping. We think that we stand a pretty good chance that our heirs will be able to determine that for themselves. See you next week. Online. |
 This web site is independent. It is not official in any way. Our editorial staff is private and unaffiliated. Please contact editor@anglicansonline.org about information on this page. ©2008 Society of Archbishop Justus. Please address all spam to press@anglicansonline.org |
For many centuries, parish churches have been accumulating information about events that matter. National and local
governments keep statistics and basic records, but our churches are where the rich details are kept. When we sifted through our own
personal archives not long ago, we found the usual curious mixture of irreplaceable items and 'why ever did we want to keep that?'
Parish archives aren't usually any different, except that after a few decades, there is rarely anyone around who knows whether some
seemingly-worthless item can be discarded. 
Since we are Anglicans Online, not Anglicans Offline or Anglicans Hardcopy, all of our own records are electronic.
We go to extraordinary lengths to avoid losing data. We are near-fanatical about making backup copies and offsite copies, and we
are (dare we say it) religious about the storage conditions under which such records are kept. Nevertheless, if you peek at 