Electronic Preservation (was: SunSite at Berkeley)

[Peter Graham, RUL]

From:  Peter Graham, Rutgers University Libraries

On 2/1 Terry Huwe wrote:
>
>Another place where the concept of _long term_ digital preservation
>is being pioneered is at Cornell's New York State School of Industrial
>and Labor Relations.  The Martin P. Catherwood Library at ILR
>has worked out an agreement with the U.S. Dept. of Labor to retain
>digital copies of government documents.  They've loaded several that
>have lasting import, e.g., the Dunlop Commission report on the "glass
>ceiling", and a recent report on child labor.

This was very encouraging until I looked at the site.  Nowhere does
the site speak of preserving the information that is available, which
is worthy and a good relationship but shows no evidence of being
preserved longer than someone is running the Mac Quadra 800 on which
it runs.  This isn't what I mean by long-term commitment, which I
think involves a considerable institutional commitment, a public
statement, and stated intentions to a) refresh where necessary, b)
migrate through technologies where necessary, and c) provide
indications of the integrity of the information so that a user in 2 or
20 years has confidence in it.

Articles on these topics have been written by (i.a.) Michael Lesk of
Bellcore on the media and technological preservation issues, for the
Commission on Preservation and Access, and by Cliff Lynch and myself
on the integrity and authentication issues.  A bibliography is
available (with links to most of these articles and many others) at
<URL:http://aultnis.rutgers.edu/pgbib.html>.
--pg

Peter Graham    psgraham at gandalf.rutgers.edu    Rutgers University Libraries
169 College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08903   (908)445-5908; fax (908)445-5888
              <URL:http://aultnis.rutgers.edu/pghome.html>