The folks at Audio Visual Preservation Solutions have recently published a research paper -- "Barcode Scanners, MiniDV Decks, and the Migration of Digital Information from Analog Surfaces" -- that addresses the migration of digital information from analog surfaces like barcodes. From the paper's introduction:
Due to the susceptibility and challenges of both digital and analog carriers, data must be periodically moved from one carrier to another within a preservation process. When analog data is migrated from its original carrier to a new digital carrier, the analog data is ultimately transformed through the process of sampling. Challenges are then posed to authenticating the accuracy of such a migration. Despite the perceptual exactness of an analog source to its digital copy, the analog data and the digital data are never exactly the same. However, in the realm of file-based digital-to-digital migration, exactness can be achieved and evaluated. Within the entirely file-based environment, checksums and data comparison tools can verify that two copies are exact matches or reveal their deviation in a way that is not feasible between analog and digital environments.
This report examines the evaluation of accurate replication of data within a third category of migration: digital tape to digital file. In this scenario, traditional video digitization sampling strategies are not necessary and digital authenticity tools such as checksums cannot be applied to digital tape. Furthermore, an exact digital migration from tape to file may be achieved.
Read the paper (or download a PDF) and see video examples here.
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