About the book

 

Files that Last
 
The e-book for the digital preservation geek!

ISBN 9781301274109

Buy it now, DRM-free, from:

* DRM-free status confirmed. The others should be, but I don’t know for sure.

Computers are our long-term memory. We trust them to keep our business and personal records, but many things can go wrong. Drives crash, data centers burn, files get corrupted, context gets lost, software to read old files becomes unavailable, overenthusiastic housecleaning puts files into the landfill. If you want files that last, you need to know what you’re doing.
FTL_03_SMALL“Digital preservation” is a term known mostly to people in libraries and archivists. Do a web search on the subject, and you’ll find mostly pages about how big institutions do it. The mission of this book is to bring it to the broader geek world — the individual user and the system administrator.

Listen to the “Files that Last” song!

Professional services were provided by Matt Leger (cover illustration) and Terri Wells (proofreading and copy editing).

Here’s the list of chapters.

My professional background as a software engineer and my experience as the principal coder of JHOVE help me out in writing this, but this book and blog aren’t connected with my former employer or with any other institution.

Some of the distributors may claim that you’ve merely “licensed” rather than “bought” a copy. But it’s my book, not theirs, and I say that if you’ve paid the proper price, or if a legitimate owner has transferred ownership to you, you own that copy. You can give it away or resell it, provided you make it no longer available to yourself.

All contents of this site Copyright 2011-2016 by Gary McGath.