A new program at the Cambridge University Library in the UK is asking people to bring their own floppy disks so that any digital artifacts on them can be retrieved. Among the newly discovered files are documents that once belonged to Stephen Hawking, says technology analyst Leontien Talboom.
SASHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Do you have old floppy disks lying around in some abandoned corner of your house? Do you even know what a floppy disk is? For the uninitiated, floppy disks became commercially available in the 1970s and were used to store digital files. Now a new program at the Cambridge University Library in the UK is asking people to bring their own floppy disks so that any digital artifacts on them can be retrieved. Leontien Talboom is a technical analyst in the digital preservation team at Cambridge University Library. She is participating in this project. Hello and thanks for coming on the show.
LEONTHIEN THALBOOM: Hello.
PFEIFFER: How did this idea even come about?
TALBUM: For the last couple of years I have been working as a technical analyst at the Cambridge University Library. And as part of my role, I'm responsible for the transmission service, which is a service that transmits material from a wide range of digital media. Once I started working on floppy disks, I very quickly realized that they were a lot more complex than I first thought, which essentially led to this project and essentially creating a common place where my community could consult when working with floppy disks.
PFEIFFER: And why do that?
TALBUM: Why do this? Because floppy disks are part of our cultural heritage. They were very, very popular in the 80s and 90s. People would use them for their personal computers, write documents on them, create spreadsheets. There were many games on floppy disks.
PFEIFFER: You mentioned that they might contain research data. I think you said that sometimes they have papers of famous people. Who's a famous person whose documents were compromised because they were stuck on some outdated floppy disk?
TALBUM: So one of the collections that we have in the library is the Stephen Hawking Archive.
PFEIFFER: Oh.
TALBUM: And in this collection we have several floppy disks that he owned and used on his personal computer.
PFEIFFER: You recently had an event open to the public with a very funny name. It was called “Copy This Floppy Disk.”
TALBUM: (Laughter).
PFEIFFER: Pretty catchy.
TALBUM: (Laughter).
PFEIFFER: And I understand that the requests have started to come in. So who came?
TALBUM: Yes. We didn't expect this, and it was so nice. There were a lot of people who signed up for it. But yes. We had a wide range of people come to us, from people who had family photographs on floppy disks to a woman who brought a bunch of floppy disks on which her father wrote stories. Her father supposedly wrote about family members, but he changed the names, and she was very happy to come back and actually be able to read them (laughter).
PFEIFFER: She wanted to take them off somehow…
TALBUM: Yes.
PFEIFFER: …So she could read what her father wrote.
TALBUM: Yes. So that was really cool. We had someone who wrote his master's thesis on a floppy disk and wanted to look at it again. Yeah. There was a whole wide range there.
PFEIFFER: The idea is that things are kind of stuck there because they're harder to get out of than before?
TALBUM: Yes, exactly. So I will always compare it to a book: if you have a book on a shelf and you leave it there for several decades, you can take it off the shelf and read it if it is kept in a stable environment, especially a library. But if you leave your floppy disk on a shelf for several decades, you won't be able to read it anymore. So, all our laptops and other devices no longer have floppy drives attached. So yes. We need special equipment.
PFEIFFER: I have one practical question for you. Floppy disks seem old-fashioned now. Nowadays we use flash drives, thumb drives and hard drives. But over time they will become outdated.
TALBUM: Yes.
PFEIFFER: What could we do now to prepare for this?
TALBUM: Make backup copies (laughter). This is one.
PFEIFFER: But even backups… even backups are vulnerable, right?
TALBUM: Yes. So if it's something really important to you, try saving it on a few different devices. This seems to be the best way to take care of things for now. Also, don't store digital media in garages or attics, because that seems to be where they…
PFEIFFER: Garages?
TALBUM: Yes, garages.
PFEIFFER: Garages or attics?
TALBUM: Yes.
PFEIFFER: Oh. Because they will most likely get wet or wet…
TALBUM: They get wet…
PFEIFFER: …Or cold.
TALBUM: …Or damp. And they get moldy (laughter).
PFEIFFER: That's great practical advice. Leontien Talboom is a technical analyst in the Digital Preservation Group at the University of Cambridge Library. It helps save information on floppy disks. Thank you.
TALBUM: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF RYAN SHEEHAN'S “LA BOITE A MUSIQUE”)
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