On Jan 23, 2026, at 11:34 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_nd.edu> wrote:
> I am now very serousluy considering NAS -- network-accessible storage. A NAS is essentically an appliance. It is a set of hard drives literally wrapped in hardware with proproetary operating system used to do I/O, provide access control, implement file transfer protocols, and to some degree, analyze the saved data. I could build my own, but then there is the convenience factor.
I'm really enjoying my NAS -- network accessible storage -- device, and I am advocating their use in libraries and archives. IMHO, these devices play to many of the core principles of librarianship and archival practice. More specifically, they make it realatively easy to independently archive and preserve digital content for the long haul.
Just to reiterate, a NAS is essencially a hard drive attached your local network. It is a thing where you and your colleagues can store digital content without using any Internet connections. Through the use of a NAS, you actually own your data. If the Internet is unaccessible, you still have access to your content. (Okay, if your local network goes down, then you are in trouble, but you could attach the NAS to a local computer if your really needed.)
I bought a NAS with four slots, and I bought four 4TB hard disk drives. After putting the drives into the NAS, and after doing a bit of configuration, I ended up with about 10TB of network storage for a one-time $1,000 out-of-pocket expense. If you fill up 10TB of disk space with sets of curated data/information, then I'd be impressed. In my case, I have cached 10's of thousands of plain text books and 100's of thousands of journal articles in the form of PDF files, and even after indexing/modeling the collection in a myriad of ways, my disk space usage is about 5TB. Your milage will vary.
How can a NAS be more systematically used in a library or archive? Well, the process is a whole lot like stacks maintenance in a library. Here's a recipe:
1. Spend $1,000 to buy a NAS and a set of disk drives.
2. Plug the NAS into your network, and configure it to
implement one or more file system services, such as but
not limited to: FTP, SFTP, NFS, Samba, and rsync.
3. Share access to the NAS with your colleagues, and at the
very least, this will enable your colleagues to mount the
NAS as if it were a local hard drive.
4. Find all of those floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, SSDs, and USB
drives used to store your important information. Once found,
copy their contents to the NAS. Once done, store the floppy
discs, etc., along with the hardware used to read/use them,
in a safe place.
5. For extra credit, digitize stuff (books, archival
matrials, audio cassettes, phonograph records, photographs,
etc.), and put the result on the NAS. Like the floppy disks,
store the originals and their associated gizmos in a safe
place.
6. For extra extra credit, use the NAS's built-in functions
to back up your colleagues' computers.
7. Compress the content of the NAS and copy the result to
the cloud. In this case, you can use "cold" storage, which
means you pay a minumum for the service, as long as you
don't access the storage very often. In my case, this is
a few dollars per month.
8. For extra extra extra credit, run a Web server on your
NAS and allow colleagues and/or the public to access some
or all of your collection.
9. Go to Step #1; librarianship and archival practice are
never done.
In the end, a number of things will have happened:
* you will actually have your data and you will not be
embolden to somebody (or something) else
* you will have practiced 3-2-1; three copies, two storage
mediums, one copy in a remote location
* you will have minimized long-term out-of-pocket costs
* you will have taken control of your own content
* you will have increased the number of your technical
skills
"Yes, but what about Google Drive?" Google Drive is good for collaboration, not long-term archival storage, and besides, those URLs are really ugly. "Yes, but we already do much of that via our website." Fine, but are you practicing 3-2-1?
In summary, I have found my NAS to be extremely empowering. I think you will too.
--
Eric Morgan, Librarian Emeritus
University of Notre Dame
Received on Tue Feb 24 2026 - 18:54:43 EST