Rethinking the Longer Term

rganising you’re your photos is very much about which software you use to manage them, but everpix got me thinking about how you can access a large collection possibly when the current crop of software is out of date, no longer supported or just not compatible with a new operating system. It is very hard to second guess which package gives you a good archive life. The sad reality is you may do better with printed hardcopy than an amorphous mass of digital files (possibly of different formats). There are very real example of the difficulties to come. Do you still have players for your vinyl records, cassette or 9 track tapes, what about the Beta Max or VCR video tape? Can you read that 5 1/2" floppy disc of ZIP cartridge? We are junking our "less visible" storage technologies at a great rate. DVDs, Thumb Drives and External USB drives will probably go the same way.
So How might we best future proof our collection?
My first thoughts are

1. Make your collection more easily searchable
2. Stick to the popular formats
3. Store the originals unaltered (and remove duplicates).
4. Archive only the best of the post processed photos.
5. Understand the need to refresh (and move) your archives

Over the next few weeks I hope to write a few more post on this and related topics

Thanks to Jessica Hische for her great drop caps.