Data Recovery Laboratory to be created for the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics by Long Island's "Raiders of the Lost Archives"
MANHASSET, N.Y., June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Science Foundation
and the
The initial goal is to extract census microdata from 300 reels of nine-track tape created in the 1970's and 80's. This will be added to data maintained by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series International (http://www.ipums.org) -- called by the Journal of American History "one of the great archival projects of the past two decades." After that, the BBS staff will use the facility to process several thousand other tapes of interest to the Bangladesh government and academia.
MMC set up a similar operation recently at the Minerals Management Service in the Denver Federal Center. This resulted from a lawsuit by Native American tribes demanding an accounting of revenues due over many decades. MMC provided project staffing, software and equipment to process 9,000 IBM tape cartridges.
Much of the software and skill for these efforts is based on MMC's long history with the U.S. National Archives.
The "Alexandria Connection"
At a workshop for official statisticians from 34 countries, a presentation by MMC's president Chris Muller likened the world's older digital assets to the Great Library of Alexandria. Over the centuries, people with various axes to grind have blamed its disappearance on Romans, Christians or Muslims, but most historians now believe that it basically withered away due to lack of attention.
"Humans have always had the problem of translating languages, but we had two things going for us: (a) much of it was written on lasting material, and (b) we could see what needed to be read. With digital data, we have lost both of those former advantages. If only our magnetic media would last as long as these hieroglyphs; if only we could read the information on them without special equipment and software ...." He went on to highlight the complications and techniques involved in capturing data from older media and file structures(1).
Data recovery and conversion can be driven by the need for compliance, migration, litigation, research and so forth. Whatever the need, The "Raiders of the Lost Archives" would be happy to help. The company website is http://www.mullermedia.com. A print-ready PDF copy of this press release can be found at: http://www.mullermedia.com/pdf/pr_Dhaka_200806.pdf.
(1) Mr. Muller will soon be writing an article on this "Alexandria" theme. Any parties interested in publication: please contact info@mullermedia.com.
Contact:
Chris Muller
(516) 833-3067, x101
Muller Media Conversions
info@mullermedia.com
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SOURCE Muller Media Conversions
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