[ RadSafe ] Electronic Record Keeping

[Ted de Castro]

Electronic record keeping is not just a store it away for a later date 
proposition!  I know.

I have computer files dating back to 1980 - mostly on sssd 5 1/4 
floppies.  I had a large software collection on about 2000 dsdd 5 1/4 
floppies.  The contents of the 2000 floppies have been archived to 3 CDs 
and much of the older stuff has been copied to harddrives - I still have 
a few more to do when I get around to it..... sometimes they are still 
readable - sometimes not - and I probably have a couple of the last few 
5 1/4 drives in existence and well as a machine still working that they 
work on (finally got rid of my 8 inch floppy drives).  Through all this 
I'd always wished I had the hard drive space to just keep it all 
online.  NOW with 29T on my system I do BUT ---- now I find that that's 
not enough.  Things can go wrong with harddrives so you have to have 
multiple copies and "visit them" from time to time and maybe even copy 
them to another drive and back just to refresh them.  In other words I 
have found that electronic records storage requires continual maintenance.

Then there is always the issue of reading what some program has encoded 
to disk.  MOST of the data I have put away is in ASCII text - very 
readable - but much is also from programs - like some old spreadsheets - 
and the of course the format was proprietary, the program no longer 
available and new programs don't import.  I recently shared some old 
Quattro Pro "utility tool" spreadsheets with a college and had to remake 
them all by hand in a newer program - and even cut and paste from the 
old software to the new didn't work.

So - electronic archiving of data requires considerable planning, 
maintenance and just plain luck.  When someday jpegs and pdfs no longer 
work I'll REALLY be in trouble.

You just don't have these kinds of issues with paper.  And they have 
lots better paper now than they did 2000 years ago!

On 3/28/2016 7:29 AM, KARAM, PHILIP wrote:
> I would second Dimiter's comment regarding electronic records. Archaeologists have recovered legible paper and papyrus from Chinese and Egyptian tombs that are millennia old - not to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls - but I can't read the 5 1/4" floppy disk that my MS thesis was saved on. There is certainly nothing wrong with keeping the bulk of your records electronically - especially those that have a relatively short retention period. But I really think that, for absolutely vital records, there's no substitute for something tangible (paper, microfiche, etc.) to ensure that they can be read at least a few decades from now. And lest you scoff - when working on the EEOICPA dose reconstruction project we were often working with records that were 60 years old.
>
> Andy
>
>
> P. Andrew Karam, PhD, CHP
> NYPD Counterterrorism
> One Police Plaza, Room 1109
> New York, NY 10038
> (718) 615-7055 (desk)
> (646) 879-5268 (mobile)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Hans J Wiegert
> Sent: Friday, March 25, 2016 11:54 AM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Electronic Record Keeping
>
> I would like to get the group's opinion regarding electronic record keeping and the potential of going to a "nearly" paperless system.  Landauer has already started pushing industrial users to go paperless and there may come a time when we might see an advantage to storing many files electronically.
> Redundancy and security are primary concerns.
>
> Have a good weekend!
>
> Thanks
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
> Hans
>
> *Retirement is, when the only day you have to set your alarm clock is Sunday
> - so you are not late for church!*
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