The Shoah Foundation is set up in the building I’m working in. They’re all about documenting the Holocaust through survivor testimonies. It’s a remarkable undertaking.
They have this amazing robotic video server behind glass in the lobby. A rotating high-density tape storage system holds thousands and thousands, probably tens of thousands, of 8mm tapes. Videotapes? Data tapes? I’m not sure.
A robotic arm grabs tapes from the storage racks after scanning its barcode with a laser.
A then turns around a places it in one of several tape drives and gently taps it in.
There are also several racks of enormous SGI computers. I’m assuming that someone sits down at a computer and calls up a particular testimonial. The robot is then told which tape to retrieve, grabs it, and places it in the appropriate drive.
If every tape contains the testimony of one survivor they have a lot of stories archived. If there is more than one per tape, they have an enormous amount.