Digital doesn’t mean permanent

Using Internet Archive to protect against “delete all”

To many, the effort to preserve audio files ends at digitization. After all, a physical object — like a record or even CD — decays. A string of data on your computer doesn’t. But what if you delete the string? What if the computer breaks? The truth is, managing digital files comes with its own set of risks.

As we transition into an all-digital media landscape, digital materials can be even more prone to loss than physical recordings. “Born digital” files are often lost irretrievably. Whether a destructive coffee spill or an overzealous hard drive purge, it’s disturbingly easy to lose the source files for your audio.

So how do you protect your most precious audio files? Enter, Internet Archive: Internet Archive (archive.org) is an Internet library based in San Francisco. It was created with the mission of preserving materials on the web for generations to come, even in the face of rapidly changing file standards and operating systems. In addition to public domain books, films, and other digital media, they also store hundreds of thousands of hours of audio. And with Pop Up Archive, you can easily contribute your collection to their growing library.

Pop Up Archive lets you preserve audio on Internet Archive servers in just one click. Simply select the Internet Archive option while creating a Pop Up Archive collection, and a copy of each audio item page will be “filed” at the Internet Archive — ensuring that your most valuable recordings become part of the public record.

Already storing audio at Internet Archive? Contact us about connecting your Internet Archive RSS feed to Pop Up Archive for automatic transcript processing.