I am writing to ask if any of you -- like us here at the Folger Shakespeare Library -- are at small institutions and without major digital asset management or IT infrastructures but nevertheless are engaged in active digital imaging?
If so, are you willing to talk (offlist or on) about your backup / archiving schemes? We are working on establishing scalable systems architecture and backup strategies for digital images of collection materials, and would love to compare notes with others who have some version of a 2-3 tier backup strategy. Our current situation is this: For each digital image of collection material, our Photography and Digital Imaging lab produces a minimum of two images: a ca. 100-120 mb unretouched master, and a ca. 80-100 mb cropped & color-corrected derivative. We are looking for a solution that will permit us to archive the masters offsite. We're currently running tape backups and taking them to a staff member's house. However, tapes sitting on the bookshelf in a Folger staff member's house isn't good enough anymore. What we'll need is at least 1.5 - 2 TB of space. This can be a dark archive because we won't need frequent access, though infrequent access would be necessary. I looked at the MCN-L archives and found one thread from November, in which some spoke of Amazon S3. Any thoughts on this, or a different service that's cost-effective? With thanks in advance, Mary Bloodworth Head of Information Services Folger Shakespeare Library
