Archives
I visited the Morgan Library and Museum in NYC a few weeks ago where I saw the Charles Dickens at 200 exhibit. Among the displays were pages from Dickens’ manuscript of Our Mutual Friend, handwritten with pen and ink, in small, crowded cursive. Words, sentences and paragraphs had lines drawn through them. New text was written over, or in the margins, or below. It was a reminder that one of the most prolific and successful writers of the English language did it by hand.
But more to the point, the manuscript survived—flaws and all—some 150 years later.
Back when I started writing with an eye to professional markets, I used a computer, and took heed of the advice to back up everything. I copied my manuscripts onto the most advanced technology of the day: floppy disks.
I no longer own a machine that can read them.
Fortunately I have always had a Luddite streak, and I print out anything I really want to keep. As for what I haven’t—well, then it’s gone, or will be when the next advance in technology takes over my most recent electronic back up system.
Does it matter? I’m not Dickens, after all. Should a future generation ask me, “What did you write?”, I’ll be able to point out the books that were published on old-fashioned paper and, of course, the paper copies that I’ve kept. My archives.
Don’t get me wrong. I could pay someone to have my floppy disks converted into another format. And then arrange to have it converted to yet a newer one, when my current one becomes obsolete. Or I could invest in a cloud archive—where my information is kept by some other entity, safely I am told. Let them worry about the formats.
But that’s work, time and expense. And I am not convinced that 150 years from now any of these methods will still be in use. Paper, on the other hand, can still be read. And if it’s lost, well, I’m not Dickens, after all.
Tags: archive Bauer on writing