Trying to Find an Article on Data Preservation

July 1, 2009 12:40 PM

What article did I read on preserving personal data?

About one or two years ago I read a blog post -- I am almost certain it was on livejournal -- about preserving your data with an eye to the future. It included advice like "print anything important with a laser printer on heavy paper stock" and "save your documents as plain text files, with at most basic markup" (not actual quotes).

I liked it because, iirc, it was generally aimed, and had some interesting information on the history of paper and rates of degeneracy for different media.

Does anyone know what this was, or any similar articles?

posted by rollick to technology (4 comments total)

I don't remember the LJ post, but on the similar articles front there's a good site about Personal Archiving by the LOC that I ran across about a year ago.
posted by pb at 12:45 PM on July 1

Charlie Stross suggests much the same here but it's probably not what you're thinking of.

Flouting the plain text recommendation, of interest is paperback.
posted by Zed at 3:23 PM on July 1

There is some really interesting discussion at CNet forums
posted by zaxour at 12:46 AM on July 2

Thanks guys, those are pretty helpful suggestions.
posted by rollick at 5:41 AM on July 3