archiving documents including commercial C of A

[crystalgrower]

I am raising this topic because I saw that the Alfa.com domain is about to disappear into the Thermo (Still gobbling up the World of Scientific Suppliers) Fisher site. 

I did not check to see if 30+ years of  archived Alfa certificates of analysis will continue to be available.  If your lab has Alfa products it would be a good idea to download pdf's as soon as possible.

I am also raising this issue because it happened several times that a request for refurbishing a 25 year old Astimex mount  came in.  Those went back out with another 30 years of life.   The compositions were sent as pdf as well as a print copy, to optimize the chance of continuity.

I have notified SPI Supplies that they can contact me for  data on any mount that they sold before the end of 2012.  I  have all Astimex C of A purchased before the end of 2012.

So we know that well made mounts can last 60+ years and  the documentation needs to  be equally long lived.   Commercial data on websites is not required to be supported past the end/takeover  of the business plus about 3 years.  It would be a real shame for a new collection to lose their documents.  The absolute minimum would be a good web copy AND a full set of page pdf's on a portable hard drive in a safe deposit box.  The work to reconstitute  would be far more significant than that nominal cost.