AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

How successful are we really at accessing data from obsolete digital carriers? While methodologies abound, shared benchmarks for retrieval success rates remain elusive, and carrier lifespan estimates vary widely. In this session, I’ll present findings from an analysis of over 5,000 digital media carriers in my institution’s collections, using binary logistic regression to evaluate predictors of data retrieval success, including media age, format, and carrier source. A Chi-square Test of Independence also sheds light on the subtle relationship between success and carrier source (manuscript vs. published).
Key findings are that while manuscript media are slightly less likely to succeed than published materials, age and filesystem emerge as more influential predictors. Along the way, we encountered unexpected challenges—high success rates and data homogeneity limited the models, forcing us to rethink how we define "success" and assess risk. Join me to explore what these findings mean and discover how the gaps and uncertainties in our data might hold the key to better benchmarks.

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