“Today I took 23 short video tapes into a specialist camera shop. The film maker was me with what was then an expensive ‘state of the art’ (very heavy) video camera. I can’t watch them any more as I don’t have suitable equipment with which to play them. The scribbled dates on them were 1991 to 1997 and tatty labels said ‘holiday’ ‘pets’, ‘birthday party’ and ‘prize giving’. The smart Gen X people in the camera shop tutted quite a bit and looked at them in amazement, staring at me as if a dinosaur was leaning on their sparkling counter. They’ve promised to ‘try and get them digitalised’ (for a high price).

They completely rejected some audio tapes of my children’s early attempts at music! Protesting seemed pointless.

I slipped quietly chastened back to the office and struggled to open (even recent) files on Word 2010 on my sparkling new laptop

So what did I learn as a non-geek?
Precious Data is dead fragile.. Threats include:
• Media and hardware fight back
• Software obsolescence is sad
• Dust and Disasters can and do occur
• We leave stuff in drawers for years

Thank goodness for Open Educational Resources eh- they will last in ’perpetuity’, won’t they?
http://www.le.ac.uk/otter

Gilly Salmon”