How NOT To Mess Up Stored CDRs! 
Article from the Fred Langa Newsletter

Be careful! Even little things--- including the glue on stick-on labels--- can ruin your CDRs.

That's one of the things your fellow readers and I found when we went back and tested long-stored CDs. In my case, the only disks that failed were those that I had covered with a glue-on paper label from a print-it-yourself CD label-maker kit. Several of these labeled CDs were, in fact, totally unreadable by every means I tried (including special data recovery software); all the data on those CDs is just plain gone. My best guess is the glue on these do-it-yourself labels interacted with either the foil or the dye, rendering the CDs useless.

All the info we have on unusual CDR failures and what you can do about them, appears in the new article live now at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15800263

I'll also include links to other articles, from the general to the deeply technical, so you can explore this issue to whatever depth you want.

If you burn CDs or CDRWs, please check out this important information, and then join in the discussion: Have you checked your old CDs? Have you discovered problems? If so, are there patterns to the failures? If you have no or few CD failures, what storage methods are you using; what tips can you share to help others achieve long storage life?