PreDigital Images
Underneath the television are photo albums that are more pulled off the shelf by babies than adults. The pictures are turning tones of reds and yellows by turn. The negatives are long lost. Photos, their meanings, and ways to conserve both have haunted me since at least 1978.
Since 1998 I have settled on the Internet as being the most promising technological solution going forward, although the web may yet prove to be the ultimate glass slide.
I first utilized CompuServe as that was how Pohnpei was first connected digitally to the outside world. The very first connectivity, circa 1995, was only through CompuServe. By late 1996 the nation was connected directly to the Internet. As CompuServe was pay-as-you-go, I began to move my material to GeoCities.
By 1999, when the college deployed a web presence, material began to populate the college server. The new "glass slide" format issue was where to store pictures that would be around in the future. Three servers in four years did not seem like even a quasi-permanent solution.
By 2008 the college server was clearly equally problematic. A college policy of simply wiping out a faculty member's folder when they passed away or resigned inveighed against the long term retention for which I was looking. I now have what amounts to a two-pronged approach where I blog via Google and also share via the social media site FaceBook.
Google Blogger stores images on Picasa, while FaceBook retains their own storage capacities.
I knew that at some point I was likely to want to go back and scan print images, but in 2010 I was spurred on by the effort of a professor who was scanning hundreds of slides from the mid-1970s and sharing them via FaceBook. For the predigital images, the social media site will remain the larger collection.
The blog, however, will permit me to post some while telling a story.
By 1999, when the college deployed a web presence, material began to populate the college server. The new "glass slide" format issue was where to store pictures that would be around in the future. Three servers in four years did not seem like even a quasi-permanent solution.
By 2008 the college server was clearly equally problematic. A college policy of simply wiping out a faculty member's folder when they passed away or resigned inveighed against the long term retention for which I was looking. I now have what amounts to a two-pronged approach where I blog via Google and also share via the social media site FaceBook.
Google Blogger stores images on Picasa, while FaceBook retains their own storage capacities.
I knew that at some point I was likely to want to go back and scan print images, but in 2010 I was spurred on by the effort of a professor who was scanning hundreds of slides from the mid-1970s and sharing them via FaceBook. For the predigital images, the social media site will remain the larger collection.
The blog, however, will permit me to post some while telling a story.
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