n.a record created upon a hardcopy surface, such as paper or parchmentNoll 1949b, 268Before the microphotographic method can be described, however, the functions and preparation of the conventional record must be understood.Fant 1958b, 451Among the unusual activities reported from the National Archives of India for December 1957 was the repair of 52 birch-bark manuscripts. During the same month, 15,409 sheets of conventional records were laminated, 14,716 sheets were deacidfied [sic], and 2,710 sheets were repaired.Fishbein 1972, 38The basic rule applies to both machine language and conventional records: They will be retained for their research value if the information is unique and has enduring value for significant research.Rieger 1973, 507Motion pictures, photographs, and sound recordings created or accumulated by public agencies in the course of their operation are public records in the same sense as those of conventional textual form. They serve analogous administrative purposes when current, and a fraction of them, when no longer current, retain an analogous measure of administrative utility and/or historical or other research value. Accordingly there should be legislative and administrative provision for their retirement at the latter stage to archival custody in accordance with the same basic principles that apply in the case of conventional records.Robbin 1979, 9The archives faces psychological, political, and procedural difficulties in convincing agencies that machine readable records are not ephemeral and must be considered potential archival materials are.Nolte 1985, 386The key to the acceptance of unorthodox materials should be whether they could meet the standards applied to conventional records, not whether they necessarily conformed to the traditional view of what constituted a valid historical resource.
