Some form of off-site back-up is essential.  Insurance industry records in
Europe suggest that around 40% of businesses that have a catastrophic loss
of their record systems (e.g. by fire, or even by theft of computers) go
bust.  This risk is far higher than the loss of e.g. factory production
facilities.

Because of the large volume of data typically involved it seems likely
that museums will increasingly look to regular (daily, or at the
worst weekly) on-line back-ups to remote storage sites.  This does, of
course, raise issues of confidentiality and security.

Patrick J. Boylan

City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
phone: +44-171-477.8750, fax:+44-171-477.8887; e-mail: [log in to unmask]
World Wide Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/

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On Thu, 6 Nov 1997, Sarah Demb wrote:

> Subject: Off-Site Storage for Electronic Data Back-ups
>
> Our museum is interested in making our data files more disaster-proof and
> is considering off-site storage. Can anyone tell us what they have done?
> We are looking at non-commercial situations as well as conventional
> storage and are interested in addressing such questions as all-hours
> access to the information, climate controlled environment, and storage
> formats (we are using DAT now).