A recording system protects knowledge by holding each preserved item in several independent forms, such as living carriers, a written copy and a physical anchor, stored in different places and checked against each other on a schedule. Redundancy only counts when the copies fail for different reasons, so a second copy in the same building, or learned from the same teacher, is a weaker backup than it looks.
Recording and backup systems combine spoken, written and physical records so that the loss of any one does not lose the knowledge.
Independence Is What Makes A Backup
Different media fail in different ways. People die or forget; paper burns, rots and is eaten; stone weathers slowly; clay survives fire but breaks. A backup is useful to the degree that it is unlikely to fail at the same time as the original. Two copies on the same shelf share their fate; two carriers who learned from the same teacher share the teacher’s errors.
Choose Media By How They Fail
| Medium | Fails by | Strength | Corpus page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Living carriers | Death, illness, forgetting, drift | Needs no materials; can explain | Redundancy: Multiple Carriers |
| Paper and ink | Fire, damp, vermin, copy errors | Cheap to copy once made | Paper Making, Carbon Ink |
| Clay tablets | Breakage, burial and loss | Survives fire | Clay Tablets |
| Bark and other surfaces | Weather, decay | Available without industry | Writing Surfaces |
| Tally marks and tokens | Misreading, loss of the key | Fast for counts | Tally Marks |
| Marked places and objects | Weathering, removal | Fixed to the hazard or site | Warning Tales |
What You Need
- A list of items to protect — the canon (Community Canon)
- At least two media per item — one living, one durable
- At least two storage places — in separate buildings
- A custodian for each copy — a person responsible for its condition
- A check schedule — compare copies against each other
Method: Layer And Check
Step 1: Rank items by risk. Highest cost of loss and fewest existing copies first.
Step 2: Give each a living layer, a written layer and, where useful, a physical anchor.
Step 3: Store the written copies apart — different buildings, ideally above flood level, away from open fire, protected from damp and vermin.
Step 4: Compare the layers on a schedule (Verification & Version Control). A written copy that disagrees with the living carriers is either a transcription error or a drifted oral version; find out which.
Step 5: Copy with care. Every hand copy can add errors. Have a second person read the copy against the original.
Step 6: Plan the next medium. When paper or ink fails or runs out, copy to the next best surface before the old copies decay (Transition to Written When Possible).
Common Mistakes
- Two copies side by side — one fire takes both.
- Never comparing the layers — the written and spoken versions drift apart unnoticed.
- Trusting the newest copy — the latest copy is not the best; it may have copied an error. Compare to the earliest verified one.
- Forgetting the key — a tally or token system without its key is unreadable.
Fire and storage
Do not store records near open flames, lamps or cooking fires, and do not use damp, enclosed space. Where records are kept with fire in the building, make a fire plan, and keep the second copy elsewhere (Fire Management).
What’s Next
- Learn next: Transition to Written When Possible — what to write first and how
- Combine with: Record Keeping — institutional memory in the education domain