The ‘Race Against Time’ to Save Music Legends’ Decaying Tapes; The New York Times, December 1, 2025

Ben Sisario

Visuals by Peter Fisher

, The New York Times; The ‘Race Against Time’ to Save Music Legends’ Decaying Tapes

"IRON MOUNTAIN IS a $25 billion company that specializes in “information management.” With more than 1,200 facilities around the world — including a 315-acre underground complex in a former limestone mine in western Pennsylvania — it offers secure storage for corporate records, as well as for media assets from Hollywood studios, record companies and prestige clients like the Grammys and the Prince estate. Within its vaults lie seemingly endless shelves of film, videotape and audio reels...

Pribble’s colleagues at Iron Mountain say their biggest challenge has been finding a way to scale his time-consuming work of restoring tape. Pribble has a solution for that, too: a new set of machines that would automate his processes, allowing him to establish satellite workshops around the world.

“They’ve always been saying they can’t clone Kelly,” he said. “This is kind of cloning me."

‘Our mission is crucial’: meet the warrior librarians of Ukraine; The Guardian, December 4, 2022

Stephen Marche, The Guardian; ‘Our mission is crucial’: meet the warrior librarians of Ukraine

"The work of the state archivists during the course of the Ukrainian war is simple – to keep what they have out of Russian hands and in existence. “Our mission is crucial because the destruction of archives can be seen as part of cultural genocide,” Khromov says. Russians have destroyed more than 300 state and university libraries since the start of the war. In May, the National Library conducted an online survey on the state of its system. By then, 19 libraries were already completely destroyed, 115 partially destroyed and 124 permanently damaged. The Russians have destroyed libraries in Mariupol, Volnovakha, Chernihiv, Sievierodonetsk, Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin and Borodianka, along with the cities they served. They have destroyed several thousand school libraries at least."

‘Inconceivable’: why has Australia’s history been left to rot?; The Guardian, May 22, 2021

Elias Visontay The Guardian; ‘Inconceivable’: why has Australia’s history been left to rot?

Historians are aghast that the National Archives have had to resort to crowdfunding to protect irreplaceable historical records

[Kip Currier: This report on the deplorable state of archival management and preservation by Australia's National Archives is a call-to-arms case study exemplar of abject information preservation dereliction of duty and responsibility. Kudos to those who are mobilizing to endeavor to avert this archival dis-management catastrophe.]

"The Guardian requested an interview with director-general David Fricker or another member of the National Archives. A spokeswoman said no one was available."

Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down; Vice, December 2, 2019

Matthew Gault, Vice;

Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down

"...[O]ver the last few years, two sites—Library Genesis and Sci-Hub—have become high-profile, widely used resources for pirating scientific papers.

The problem is that these sites have had a lot of difficulty actually staying online. They have faced both legal challenges and logistical hosting problems that has knocked them offline for long periods of time. But a new project by data hoarders and freedom of information activists hopes to bring some stability to one of the two “Pirate Bays of Science...

“It's the largest free library in the world, servicing tens of thousands of scientists and medical professionals around the world who live in developing countries that can't afford to buy books and scientific journals. There's almost nothing else like this on Earth. They're using torrents to fulfill World Health Organization and U.N. charters. And it's not just one site index—it's a network of mirrored sites, where a new one pops up every time another gets taken down,” user shrine said on Reddit."

It’s Almost 2019. Do You Know Where Your Photos Are?; The New York Times, November 29, 2018

John Herrman, The New York Times; It’s Almost 2019. Do You Know Where Your Photos Are?

"Jason Scott is a founder of Archive Team, a loose network of archivists and programmers that creates tools for extracting data from services that are at risk of disappearing. Flickr has given users options to export everything from the site; the Archive Team is working on alternatives, just in case.

“The sad thing about the tech industry is they built everything on subsidized lies: ‘This is going to cost you nothing and you’re going to get amazing things,’” Mr. Scott said. It’s not as easy to imagine a future without Google as it might have been to imagine a future without Zing, or even Yahoo. But it shouldn’t be hard.

“It’s 100 percent like Flickr,” Mr. Scott said. “Tech companies are still selling a lot of very neophyte people a lot of problematic lies about things that matter a lot to them.”"