SGML for Web Pages

[Heinrich C. Kuhn]

I share Robb Scholten's concerns about long term
availability of eJournals, but I think there are ways
out of the predicament.

> Ink on paper is an international standard.  It has been in use for 
> a long time.  As simplistic as these seems to us today, someone who 
> penned a scroll in Alexandria in 100 B.C. would be amazed that we are 
> still able to interpret the message.  This is no small achievement.

And we will have to rely on ink on stable paper 
for a *very* long time yet. The only sensible
solution, that I can think about for longterm
archiving "electronic" documents is having a
paper printout of all the documents in a small
number (e.g. one or two on every continent)
of archiving libraries. (Very few copies on
parchment and paper were sufficient for the 
survival of quite a number of ancient and medieval
and early modern texts ...)


> The digital revolution requires some superhuman intervention 
> on someone's part to capture information for posterity.  

I hope normal human endevors will suffice: A number
of great hosts for archiving what is thought to be
potentially relevant and transforming it from time
to time to newer formats when the old ones become
obsolete plus the above-mentioned archiving on paper.

>  Is HTML the best standard for display of text and graphics?  
> I don't know, but I wouldn't rush to transform my entire 
> library into web pages.

I wouldn't opt for that transformation either, but I
would opt for an inclusion of HTML-coded texts into
the "copia textus" to make available to the customers
of the library.
I admit that it is not too improbable, that interpreting
GIF- and JPEG-encoded graphics will be a problem after 
a quarter of a century, but I see no such problems with
HTML, as HTML is basically ASCII and ASCII will be readable
for a long time to come probably. And as long as the
standards of encoding are available (on paper or on any
other medium) it is easy to write a program that can 
interpret this format even if by some bad chance the 
present programs should all have become obsolete.

>  What do we do in the meanwhile?

What we've done always: Try to make available
all relevant material to today's readers and
seek ways of archiving that provide for the
needs of tomorrow's readers.

Relatively optimistic

Heinrich C. Kuhn
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*  Dr. Heinrich C. Kuhn   (coordinator libraries)
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