CompuServe Messages

Jan, Man-oh-man! You don't ask for much, do you. First of all, LC does have a Preservation Division which is doing research into ways of keeping acid-based paper from deteriorating. The only thing to do is to treat the paper with an alkaline that will neutralize the acid in the paper. So far, the only treatment method that works on whole books uses di-ethyl zinc, a gas that can explode spontaneously. There have been attempts to take the di-ethyl zinc process commercial, but it has not been successful because of the risks of explosion. The American Memory project has been trying to put some of the local history materials on to CD-ROM, but it has been slow and expensive. I work on putting machine-readable files such as the bibliographic catalog on CD-ROM, and that can be difficult enough. When you talk about converting text and illustrations to machine-readable form and putting them on CD-ROM, it gets obscenely expensive. It might be great for you to have a copy of Hitler's secret files on CD-ROM, but how many copies could LC sell? How much would we have to charge per copy to recover our costs? Big bucks, or BIG BIG BUCKS? Finally, have you any idea how long CDs last? Every one seems to think that they will last indefinitely, but they have not been around long enough to evaluate their long term durability and readability. My hunch is that they have only about a ten year useful life. Phil