Library is Rescuing Historical Treasures Trapped on Old Floppy Disks from the ‘Digital Dark Ages’ (2025-11-14T12:00:00+05:30)

Credit – Cambridge University Library Cambridge University archivists are leading an important project to extract and conserve valuable information from floppy disks before they become unusable. The initiative began when the archive received a box of 5.25-inch floppy disks from a DOS-formatted computer that belonged to none other than physicist Steven Hawking, who was able to use early computers despite his disability from ALS. The challenges a group of archivists encountered when they attempted to read the disks helped them realize how vulnerable this funny, briefly adopted technology which predate compact disks is to the ravages of time, and how a clock was ticking to get important information off them before they became unusable. It spawned a project, aptly named in our current pop-culture environment: “Future Nostalgia.” Before the term was chased from the historical lexicon with torches and pitchforks, “the Dark Ages” were used to describe the period in European history when primary source writings are particularly scant—between the fall of Rome and the Middle Ages. The Future Nostalgia project presents the case that the late 20th century may form a sort of dark ages when historians in the future look back on our time and see a big hole in early computer writings. Certainly books and magazines and newspapers are available a-plenty, but if floppy disks and other early technologies aren’t kept in good order, early computer writings may seem sparce to future historians. Floppy disks present numerous challenges to archivists, among which were the multiple formats they were built and coded for. “There wasn’t one system that dominated the market,” explains Leontien Talboom, a member of the Cambridge University Library’s digital preservation team who is leading the project. That means that as many as a dozen different early computing systems are needed to read the full spectrum of floppy disk formats, and it’s not always straight forward finding these machines. Nor is it straightforward that the disks themselves are readable. They may be moldy, if stowed away in an attic for example. Iron oxide on the surface of the plastic may corrode material away. It can also lose its magnetism, preventing it being from read entirely. That is why Talboom and her team are urgently trying to acquire collections of noteworthy writers or authors—like Hawking—and further digitize them from their early floppy disk format. So far, in addition to Hawking, they’ve uncovered abstract lists by the poet Nicholas Moore, articles from a society of the paranormal, and more. “Most of the donations we get are from people who are either retiring or passing away,” Talboom told the BBC. “That means we’re seeing more and more things from the era of personal computing.” Not only are donations coming from those retired or passed, but so is a lot of information on how to use different formats. An example comes from the archivists’ work with a set of floppy disks that contained speeches and letters with constituents of Neil Kinnock, a UK labor party leader in the 1980s. “They were written on the Diamond Word processor,” explained Chris Knowles, a participant in the Future Nostalgia project.” There’s not much information about that system out there. There are lots of fan communities around any system that had games, and archivists often borrow their tools. But where that doesn’t exist, it’s more awkward.”Work continues, and Talboom is more and more eager to have the public’s involvement with the project. She sees it as a win-win partnership: owners of floppy disks get to see what kind of materials their old colleagues or family members wrote onto them, and Future Nostalgia gets more material, but also more knowledge and practice about how to access and preserve floppy disk formats and the material they contain. Library is Rescuing Historical Treasures Trapped on Old Floppy Disks from the ‘Digital Dark Ages’