Urk ... I meant to say "since this conversation .." but swapped the consonants.
From: "clearwater" <clearwater@xxxxxxxx>
To: "Oregon Birders OnLine" <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2019 8:46:02 PM
Subject: Re: Wallowa County Gyrfalcon
Since this conservation took a philosophical bent on the durability of birding
"records":
Not sure how many people noticed, but for a couple of days last week, the
entire archives of the OBOL list since 2012 vanished. They were later restored
so this was just a temporary glitch, but ... hopefully this serves as a
reminder that any digital medium is transient.
Prior to that, the entire OBOL archives prior to around 2012 were lost when
OBOL switched from Mailman to Freelists. A few individuals kept digital copies
but otherwise there were no central records.
We might hope that institutions like Cornell will maintain our digital records
(on eBird etc.) indefinitely, but there's no guarantee.
Paper records are a good thing, even if seriously undervalued in the current
climate.
--
Joel Geier
Corvallis, Oregon
