Floppy disks are several decades old—many of the disks are degrading and the data stored on them is at risk of being lost. In response, Leontien Talboom , a technical analyst at Cambridge University Libraries and Archives, led a roughly year-long project preserving floppy disks called “ Future Nostalgia ,” which concluded in January. Leontien Talboom Leontien Talboom is a technical analyst at Cambridge University Libraries and Archives, where she transfers material from a wide range of storage media to make them accessible to archivists. IEEE Spectrum spoke to Talboom about her work preserving data from Cambridge’s collection of floppy disks and collecting knowledge about the disks themselves. Why is it important to preserve floppy disks now? Leontien Talboom: Two reasons. First, the physical media is starting to degrade. Floppy disks are made from plastic, but they’ve got a magnetic layer of iron oxide, and that’s deteriorating.…