- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals “insane” say experts::Department hopes to save £4.5m a year by digitising – then binning – about 100m wills that date back 150 years
Not just me. There’s plenty of academic research on the subject. Here’s the Library of Congress’ preferred format for preservation of all types of documents. https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/index.html
I’m totally willing to bet any pdf will be unreadable in 1000 years. Low-acid paper, not only possible, but likely.
It’s not like we don’t also store the file details of the storage mechanism, we’re not going to forget how to decode the exact version of pdf used to store them in a world where we’re able to safely store thousands of tons of pointless old legal documents.
And the cost of converting all these old legal documents onto low acid paper and storing them is going to be huge, I really don’t think anyone actually wants to do that.