I spent the day in the office working on my FEMA certifications. I was looking at the many shelves of old field books wondering how long it would be before they begin to crumble from old age. I wondered if they've been scanned and stored in a computer file. I've always felt that field books are the most valuable part of any surveying business. How do you preserve your field books?
All of the old books in our office are on a bookshelf and most don't get looked at until we get a job within a couple lots. The oldest field book in our office is from the early 80s and is still completely legible and depending on the area, still applicable. Sometimes though it seems the same lot in 1984 may as well be another planet. Old field books are a testament of surveys past, some left to recollect and some left to collect dust.
We have field books from 1850 on. They are high quality paper, and inked. Still in great shape, but they are scanned and indexed.
Field Dog, post: 370643, member: 9186 wrote: I was looking at the many shelves of old field books wondering how long it would be before they begin to crumble from old age.
The answer is that if you buy field books with a high rag content in the paper, preservation should not be a problem. My 100% rag K&E field books from 30 years ago are still in perfect shape because of the archival quality paper and good bindings. In my opinion, trying to save a buck or two on a field book that will contain information that costs thousands of dollars to accumulate is poor economy.
I use quality loose leaf pages that are kept in the folder they pertain to and purchased a box of holes to assure they will stay in a notebook.
Kent McMillan, post: 370666, member: 3 wrote: The answer is that if you buy field books with a high rag content in the paper, preservation should not be a problem. My 100% rag K&E field books from 30 years ago are still in perfect shape because of the archival quality paper and good bindings. In my opinion, trying to save a buck or two on a field book that will contain information that costs thousands of dollars to accumulate is poor economy.
Exactly right.
Always keep paper and film documents in the coolest place you have - it slows down any chemical reactions which may happen between ink, paper, etc and the mice don't hang out in the cold either.
chris mills, post: 370679, member: 6244 wrote: Exactly right.
Always keep paper and film documents in the coolest place you have - it slows down any chemical reactions which may happen between ink, paper, etc and the mice don't hang out in the cold either.
I'd recommend the best compromise between cool and dry. You don't want paper in a humid basement just for the lower temperature.
There is a box of field books in the archives at work containing two to three dozen books. Their demise would mean nothing, not one page in them has a date, crew, or project reference. Some day I am going to throw the whole lot in the dumpster.
I too have boxes and shelves of the damn things dating back the 18 years I've been in business. I prefer to use loose leaf right in the rain paper and store them by project number in binders. I have scanned them all and wonder what the purpose of keeping the originals is. In this day and age I do not record a lot of info in the books other than descriptions and unusual conditions. Before anyone flames me, I do record setup info and the first measurement to monuments and control but nothing that could be reduced to prepare a map. That is what data collectors are for.
So my questions is why keep the originals if I have good scans that I can easily access.
The biggest problem in the agency I work in, is NOT preserving ALL of the field books. It is really a hit-or-miss situation; sometimes there may be no field books from portions of highways constructed as recently as the 1960's or newer, sometimes they do exist. Sometimes you find ones that go back 100-plus years, sometimes you don't.
The field books that are known to exist, are usually kept either at the region headquarters or in archives IIRC. Because of short staffing, any FB scans are done on a per-request basis. I would LOVE to scan the extant FB's and index them... maybe they'll let me before I retire.
John Putnam, post: 370804, member: 1188 wrote: So my questions is why keep the originals if I have good scans that I can easily access.
If maintaining access to the data is REALLY important, then keep the originals. Field books don't need to be reformatted or copied whenever a new pencil is invented..
Scans are fine for a few years - but keeping digital data long term is expensive and not 100% reliable. Every decade or so you will probably need to upload all the data, check it is still readable and then copy it on to a new medium (and possibly format).
There has to be a cost and time balance determined to decide if the data is likely to be sufficiently valuable and, if so, on how much of it and in what form it is kept.
If you go down the route of digital storage there are two essential points:
1) Keep the data in two different formats, so if one becomes unsupported you c an still get it back from the other
2) Keep the copies on different sourced media. Buying two hard drives from the same batch is a recipe for disaster. If one has a fault, then others in the same batch probably have the same fault as well. Best to go for different manufacturers for whatever media you pick.
By the way, Bill93 is quite correct: I should have mentioned dryness as well as cool.
Warren Smith, post: 370665, member: 9900 wrote: We have field books from 1850 on. They are high quality paper, and inked. Still in great shape, but they are scanned and indexed.
Hmm. I thought a hard pencil was the norm (ultimately Pentel mechanical pencils), and erasures were not permitted, booking errors were crossed out. Fieldbooks were hard cover and bound, looseleaf not permitted.
I didn't think that yellow field books were permitted. Just the orange...
Historic boundaries and conservation efforts.
I use brown covers.
Mike Marks, post: 370920, member: 1108 wrote: Hmm. I thought a hard pencil was the norm (ultimately Pentel mechanical pencils), and erasures were not permitted, booking errors were crossed out. Fieldbooks were hard cover and bound, looseleaf not permitted.
Mike,
That's true for the 20th century. Back in the 19th, the books followed the format of the GLO deputies. In fact, four former deputies became County Surveyors here and continued with Swamp and Overflowed surveys per the State Surveyor General's instructions.