CD-ROM

Newly Recovered Ground Zero Photos Show Why You Should Back Up your CD-Recordable Disks Now: Photo CDs Don’t Last Forever

· June 18, 2019 · CD-ROM, Preservation · 4 Comments

An article by Sean Hollister in The Verge web site at http://bit.ly/2RlRD1V describes a problem that every genealogist would like to avoid. In fact, it is easily avoidable if you are already aware of the problem and if you have already taken steps to side-step this technical issue.

When comedian and activist Jon Stewart gave an impassioned speech before Congress to seek ongoing aid for 9/11 first responders, it inspired Internet Archive software curator and digital preservationist Jason Scott to share something timely with the world as well: a newly discovered cache of photos from one of the workers who toiled away at Ground Zero, and who’d saved thousands of those photos on writeable CD-ROM disks.

But Scott says he wasn’t actually able to preserve all of those photos, because of the way they were stored. Many of the images stored on writeable CD disks were unreadable! Indeed, CD-recordable disks made on personal computers do not last forever. In this case, they didn’t even last 8 years!

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A Dictionary of Occupational Terms Based on the Classification of Occupations used in the Census of Population [for Great Britain], 1921.

· August 30, 2017 · Books, CD-ROM · 2 Comments

A Dictionary of Occupational Terms Based on the Classification of Occupations used in the Census of Population, 1921 was published in 1927 and, as the full title indicates, it was based on the classification of occupations used in the 1921 UK census. It obviously is a great resource when tracing ancestry in Great Britain. However, many of the occupations listed in this book also were commonly used in all the other English-speaking countries so the use of this reference book is not limited to only the “mother country.”

Originally published as a printed book, the Dictionary of Occupational Terms is by far the most comprehensive dictionary of British occupations, with almost 30,000 terms, and includes (sometimes very detailed) descriptions of the activities that each occupation involves.

A Dictionary of Occupational Terms Based on the Classification of Occupations used in the Census of Population, 1921 is extremely rare. In the British Isles, copies are available in only three of the six legal deposit libraries, four university libraries, two public libraries, and the London Library. The UK National Archives has two copies, one in the document collection and one on the shelves in the Research & Enquiries Room. Copies occasionally surface in the second-hand book trade.

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Danville, Kentucky, Bellevue Cemetery Records are now Available on CD

· June 21, 2016 · CD-ROM · 2 Comments

The Boyle County (KY) Genealogical and Historical Society, Inc, now offers for sale a CD of Bill and Beulah Jones’s massive work on Danville’s Bellevue Cemetery Records. The new CD contains more than 14,000 documented and well-researched entries, adding to and correcting the city’s records.

Though Bellevue is not the oldest cemetery in the county, many earlier interments have been moved to the Bellevue Cemetery, so Bellevue has become THE resting place of many important historical figures in the central Kentucky area, from the early 19th Century on. Bill and Beulah have spent several years working on this project. The CD contains a Microsoft Excel file of the records (printable on 8-1/2 by 14 paper), an Adobe PDF version, an explanatory page, and a series of overall and detailed maps of Bellevue.

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Your CD Collection is Dying

· May 24, 2016 · CD-ROM, Preservation · 13 Comments

If you’ve tried listening to any of your old music CDs lately—if you even own them anymore—you may have noticed they often won’t play. The same is probably true of data stored on CD-ROM disks; the older ones are deteriorating and are becoming more and more difficult to use. The data CD-ROM disks are producing more read errors than they used to.

Luckily, there are easy solutions available if you take steps NOW.

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Jason Scott Sadofsky Wants Your Old AOL CDs

· May 21, 2015 · CD-ROM, History · 5 Comments

Finally! Someone has found a use for all those AOL disks that were sent to your house and given away by many stores. Jason Scott Sadofsky is a Free-Range Archivist & Software Curator for the Internet Archive. He wants every disc ever made, but is specifically requesting that readers of his blog send him old AOL discs, the kind that came free at Best Buy checkouts, packed in magazines and mailed randomly to your house back in the 1990s. He wants to add them to an online archive of computer history.

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