Information Storage Technologies
Marcia J. Bates · Auerbach Publications eBooks · 2011
According to a study by the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley, the world produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. An exabyte is 260 bytes or approximately 1,000,000,000 gigabytes. All storage capacities in this entry are approximate because storage is measured in a binary (base 2) numbering system. For example, there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, not the 1000 bytes normally associated with a kilobyte. A terabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, not 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. The approximations are much easier to work with. Five exabytes of information is roughly equivalent to 500,000 digital copies of the print collections of the Library of Congress. According to the same study over 90% of this new information was stored on magnetic media. Less than 10% was stored in analog format such as paper or film.[1] In 2007, Horison Information Strategies estimated that more than 12 exabytes of information were created worldwide annually.[2] IDC analysts estimated that in 2006 all digital data totaled 261 exabytes and that by 2011 it will increase tenfold. In 2007 there was less storage available than that required for new data.[3] Since the advent of the modern electronic computer, information storage technologies, technologies used to keep digital data for current or future use, have experienced rapid improvements. Typically, each new generation of data storage has been smaller in relative size and larger in capacity. In libraries and other information organizations or centers, digitization of materials is relatively new when compared to the long history of books and libraries. This entry discusses information storage technologies that are used in a wide variety of information organizations including libraries.