This particular approach evades the problem by transferring digital materials to more stable media. Printing the digital material and retaining the paper copies or recording it to microfilm are the most prevalent versions of this strategy [oAoDI96]. The resulting paper is more durable and can be preserved using well established methods. The same applies for microfilm.
Converting content from a digital to a conventional medium implies heavy loss of information. Especially inherently digital documents cannot be printed without losing their unique attributes. Whatever interactive or dynamic characteristics the document had is destroyed. Any use of multimedia functionality is lost.
Nevertheless, in specific situations where the digital documents are no more than surrogates or correspondents to text on paper this strategy may offer an appropriate short-term solution. The process can easily integrate into activities and structures for preserving traditional materials making its requirements and costs predictable [Rus99].
If the objective in preservation involves preserving the original form and functionality then the method of Change Media is no viable solution. Furthermore, an analysis of the amounts of data to be preserved render this approach infeasible for all but the smallest archivation aims.