[romdev]

I've got mixed feedback on this. I had a house fire a few years back where all my paper literature was soaked, and stayed in water for days to weeks. Books, and especially my comic book collection consisting of Sandman and other very collectible treasures, were transmuted to a soupy, unreadable mess. It was a very emotional time salvaging what little I could of these gifts from friends and family. Interestingly the 5.25" and 3.5" floppies from 1990 and prior were in water tight containers, but I knew from previous attempts to recover data from them that I'd be wasting my time trying to get ancient BBS text files from them. Digital media will expire, but I've got IDE hard drives from 30 years ago that have fared pretty well, and thankfully I had the foresight to duplicate the magnetic media that has a known shelf life to media that might survive a bit longer. And data grows in size and scale, so a 20MB hard drive from the 80s is pretty easy to preserve as long as you're organized, and plan, and don't procrastinate too long. But thinking about it - like life, isn't data meant to expire? Maybe your descendants will appreciate a few pictures of you, and some journal entries or your great novel draft. But I have no interest even in my mom's or Hemingway's kindergarten buddies. And especially if there are published books on a shelf, they're almost always replaceable. Think of who will be cleaning out your house when you die while you curate your data, and try to preserve what's of greatest worth to you and that audience.

And finally, last time I visited my father he showed me a 6" thick bible that had been in the family since the early 1800s, with beautiful fonts, colored illustrations, and the first few blank pages filled with marriage and birth records. There are some books that can't be replaced or duplicated, and should be cherished like a child.