Re: a preservation experience

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

It would be interesting to know how many institutional archives have
long-term funding assured. I would certainly trust a national library
fulfilling the function of a national digital archive of published
material much more and I only wish they could start performing this
function quicker. They certainly have a track record in print.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Hitchcock" <sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: a preservation experience

> The lesson of this example is that authors should always additionally
> deposit a copy of their published papers in an institutional archive. This
> is also known as author *self*-archiving, in other words, under the
> author's and institution's control. I would not expect any properly
> conceived, properly managed institutional archive, with full institutional
> backing, to delete or lose any paper once accepted into the archive. By
> doing this the author gets all the benefits of OAI search as well as
> Google and the Wayback Machine, etc., and is effectively participating in
> a mini-LOCKSS scheme (multiple copies).
>
> Steve Hitchcock
> Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
>
> At 17:37 21/10/03 -0400, you wrote:
>>It might not be irrelevant to this list's consideration of issues
>>surrounding digital resources and their preservation to hear a little
>>story of discovery.
>>
>>A colleague had 'published' an article in the proceedings of an
>>international conference about three years ago.  The proceedings were
>>only published on-line, and she had linked from her own home page to the
>>official version.  On looking for that article a couple of days ago (to
>>verify some quotations and figures), she discovered that the original
>>publisher had either moved or deleted the original file.  A moderately
>>thorough search of the site showed that it was advertising *next* year's
>>conference in the same series, but the publication itself was gone.  A
>>Google search was no help.
>>
>>Consulted on this, I wondered what would happen if . . .  So I went to 
>>the Internet Archive site (www.archive.org) and used their "Wayback 
>>Machine": type in the URL of the desired resource and see what happens.  
>>In a few seconds (good DSL), I had the list.  Hits are listed by Wayback 
>>by date of archiving sweep -- thus, if the same file was modified over 
>>time, captures at different dates will capture different versions.  
>>There were 6 hits for the year 2001 and 1 for February 2002, none since 
>>(suggesting when the original was lost).  The first hit proved a null 
>>set -- file not found. The second through seventh were all gold:  the 
>>original file in its original 'published' form, complete with all 
>>graphics and links.
>>
>>I was gobsmacked!  It left me feeling as I do when I try some improbable
>>keystroke combination deep in the bowels of Microsoft Word, and something
>>I thought impossible suddenly happens.  I feel equally sure that the
>>achievement might be hard to reproduce.  (Naturally we made a copy to
>>hold onto.)
>>
>>Does this model suggest the value of a comprehensive Internet archive?
>>Does it exemplify the "Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe" principle?  Or was
>>it gross dumb luck?  I leave these questions to others to discuss.
>>
>>Jim O'Donnell
>>Georgetown University