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Digital (Tape) Archives Survey



Hi everyone,

I'm attempting to gather some "market intelligence". We've encountered a
number of situations where folks have archival data on tape and need
it "refreshed" into a new medium--similar NARA's work at the Center for
Electronic Records.

We're convinced that there are *many* more situations like this out there,
waiting to be discovered, including 9-tracks, 3480/90, QIC, 8mm etc. in
IBM, DEC, Wang, Prime, Unix and many other "legacy" formats.

My problem is getting a handle on the market size. I'm hoping that you can
help me to answer one or more of these questions:

(a) What industries would tend to accumulate lots of archival data?
(b) What reasons: pure business; statutory requirements; legal protection?
(c) What's the typical proportion of tape usage (backup vs archival vs
exchange) for particular industries?
(d) What proportion of 5-year-old archives have or have not been scrapped?
Same for 10-year-old, 15-yr, etc.
(e) How might one find computer users with large tape archives? By
industry? By type of computer? By type of tape drive?

I realize that most folks (especially me <g>) don't have access to all the
statistics on these things. I also realize that your time is valuable, and
I don't expect you to do the spade-work for me.

However, I think it's likely that you will have insights into one or more
of these issues that haven't occurred to us.

*Any* comments will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Chris Muller
Muller Media Conversions
http://www.mullermedia.com
212-344-0474

p.s. - We've written an article on some of the things we *do* know <g>
about tape archives. It's called "National Information Resources Face
a 'Phantom Menace'". See file phantom.pdf at
http://www.mullermedia.com/mm_convert_about_news_pdflib.htm

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