Preservation of correspondence

?'m finishing a job that I found interesting in that it illustrates a problem with media preservation that hadn't occurred to me. We were sent about 100 8" diskettes for conversion which I didn't think was unusual at all until I started to read the material from them. These are oral history transcriptions--with "shall remain sealed for 15 (up to 20; the period varies) years before publication" notices on them. I checked with the sender and yes, indeed, these were created (transcribed from audio cassette tape) and stored in sealed boxes for the entire time. Fortunately, there was only one unrecoverable error in the entire lot- -and it was in an unallocated area. But I thought it was interesting in that it points up the issue that it's sometimes *not* possible to recopy things to newer media every few years, regardless of one's desire to preserve the content. Cheers, Chuck