It is an interesting issue Glen generally with what to do with one’s digital assets in perpetuity. Not only with our imaging archives but we could expand that to include social media accounts and the like. However, getting back to the issue of our imaging archives there are really only two broad options being some sort of physical media or an on line cloud based facility.
The benefit of an online facility is that the management of the technology is done by others and it can be easily access anytime, anywhere. The disadvantage is that it may incur an ongoing expense which would have to be funded.
The benefit of physical media is that it does not require ongoing funding and doesn’t necessarily require a knowledge of passwords to gain access. Physical media does have limitations though in terms of longevity and technology changes. Just think of how CD ROMs have been and gone. An archive stored on a physical media would need to be refreshed every few years by transferring it to new media. Who is going to do that?
My thinking is that an online cloud storage facility is the best option though it would have to be supported with a funding model that doesn’t pass on a liability to future generations. Of course there is an obvious question of who is likely to want to look at all of this data once the next generation has moved on …
Which reminds me, I must work out what I’m going to do with that box of photo albums I found in the shed the other day …
