Paradox in Paradox Database - Hybrid Asset Preservation

In November 2023 the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC) acquired a unique digital resource on English stained glass and church architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, created by Dr Michael Kerney (1934–2022), an acknowledged authority on the subject.

The database made of 45 tables and organised by source of citation is a comprehensive index of mentions that include descriptions of stain glass windows from texts published in Victorian period up until late 20^th century. Michael wanted to document the stain glass making and production of the Victorian period and he recorded the mentions that described new additions to church buildings in England (for example, a new stain glass window added or replaced during restoration work). His work however extended to cover the stain glass making and production of the 20^th century. Such indexed citations came from variety of sources, including published, rare primary sources and archive material. The most unique and valuable table is the SLIDES & NOTES as it contains descriptions to colour photographic slides collection of over 7000 images of stain-glass windows created by Michael himself during his survey visits to churches across England.

The database was created with Paradox system and stored locally on a personal laptop IBM ThinkPad R40e, a model released by IBM in October 2003 and discontinued year after in October 2004. The database has never had a front-end. Access to data was provided by paper print outs sent by Michael by post. Although archival science dictates that we should always preserve the records in the way they were used this approach will not serve well our current archive community. We are now considering different ways of preserving the datasets. The poster presents work in progress and explains how the data was migrated and extracted from the original Paradox system.