The Flashback Project: Rescuing disk-based content from the 1980s to the present day

Abstract

• This paper introduces the British Library's Flashback project, a proof-of-concept that explored the practical challenges of preserving digital content stored on physical media (magnetic and optical disks) using a sample of content from hybrid collection items dating from between 1980 and 2010. It describes some of the activities undertaken by the project, including: the initial collection profiling and sampling of content, the extraction of the content from discs, and the project team's experiments with identifying and applying preservation approaches to the content, which included both emulation and migration. It concludes with some general observations on the approaches taken and looks forward to the second phase of the project.