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Family Memory Reminder
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<blockquote data-quote="Marg's Man" data-source="post: 412159" data-attributes="member: 4085"><p>As Marg has implied I have been doing family history for years now. Ours is a Scottish Clan and I was the state representative for a few years so I held all the records being collected in this country. There's about 11000 individuals all related back to the early 1800's when the country was settled from the UK & Ireland.</p><p></p><p>It's a treasure trove. Lately I have been collecting the data for Marg's family; even turned up a few of those skeletons. </p><p></p><p>You have to be careful with information from and about living people. Memories are imperfect, 'scandals' are hushed up and people's own attachments have to be considered. e.g. Marg has several nieces and nephews by adoption. All are (now) aware of their adopted status but recently I offended one fo them. I was showing the family where I was up to when one of the adopted children took exception to their record showing their adopted status. They felt "part of their adopted family". The child had been adopted from a badly neglectful mother who nearly starved the kid to death through lack of care. This was resented and I was told to remove any suggestion of adoption which I have done - to the copy they see. So there's two sets of books - the true ones and the fictional ones. Just make sure it is the true ones that are passed on to later generations when the 'shame' is forgotten and the truth is more important</p><p></p><p></p><p>I first ran into the volatility of magnetic media about 15 years ago when I was asked to retrieve some computer files from data tapes of an old computer. After a huge amount of effort we finally got a tape drive set up and programmed to read the format the tapes had been written in only to find that about a third of the data was gone forever; wiped by the random events that degrade magnetically stored information. </p><p></p><p>We also discovered that the 'shelf life ' of magnetic tape is generally regarded as about ten years, magnetic computer disks are a bit better, 12 years. They physically break down as the magnetic coating peels off. Even optical media (CD's and DVD's, BlueRay disks) have a limited but longer shelf life. The upside is that computer information, being digital, can be rewritten to new disks and checked for accuracy quite easily. We've all seen the photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy etc that is almost unreadable after a few generations. This doesn't happen with digital data as easily and there are programs to verify the copy by comparing it with the original.</p><p></p><p>Video and audio tape has the same physical limitations. They should be preserved by copying them to digital format and backing them up every five years or so. We didn't do this so we have lost precious memories of our kids growing up. Strangely, NOT playing them accelerated the degradation.</p><p></p><p>Formats change too, remember the old Betamax tapes that couldn't played in a VHS. If you make a copy of your old Beta tapes before the player died, you lost your recordings. So watch for changes of format.</p><p></p><p>Marg's Man</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marg's Man, post: 412159, member: 4085"] As Marg has implied I have been doing family history for years now. Ours is a Scottish Clan and I was the state representative for a few years so I held all the records being collected in this country. There's about 11000 individuals all related back to the early 1800's when the country was settled from the UK & Ireland. It's a treasure trove. Lately I have been collecting the data for Marg's family; even turned up a few of those skeletons. You have to be careful with information from and about living people. Memories are imperfect, 'scandals' are hushed up and people's own attachments have to be considered. e.g. Marg has several nieces and nephews by adoption. All are (now) aware of their adopted status but recently I offended one fo them. I was showing the family where I was up to when one of the adopted children took exception to their record showing their adopted status. They felt "part of their adopted family". The child had been adopted from a badly neglectful mother who nearly starved the kid to death through lack of care. This was resented and I was told to remove any suggestion of adoption which I have done - to the copy they see. So there's two sets of books - the true ones and the fictional ones. Just make sure it is the true ones that are passed on to later generations when the 'shame' is forgotten and the truth is more important I first ran into the volatility of magnetic media about 15 years ago when I was asked to retrieve some computer files from data tapes of an old computer. After a huge amount of effort we finally got a tape drive set up and programmed to read the format the tapes had been written in only to find that about a third of the data was gone forever; wiped by the random events that degrade magnetically stored information. We also discovered that the 'shelf life ' of magnetic tape is generally regarded as about ten years, magnetic computer disks are a bit better, 12 years. They physically break down as the magnetic coating peels off. Even optical media (CD's and DVD's, BlueRay disks) have a limited but longer shelf life. The upside is that computer information, being digital, can be rewritten to new disks and checked for accuracy quite easily. We've all seen the photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy etc that is almost unreadable after a few generations. This doesn't happen with digital data as easily and there are programs to verify the copy by comparing it with the original. Video and audio tape has the same physical limitations. They should be preserved by copying them to digital format and backing them up every five years or so. We didn't do this so we have lost precious memories of our kids growing up. Strangely, NOT playing them accelerated the degradation. Formats change too, remember the old Betamax tapes that couldn't played in a VHS. If you make a copy of your old Beta tapes before the player died, you lost your recordings. So watch for changes of format. Marg's Man [/QUOTE]
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