[LINK] Legal Deposit laws

[Howard Lowndes]

On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 11:20, Margaret Phillips wrote:
> Stephen's is an interesting point to ponder about web page's being like
> signs, rather than publications.  He wrote:
> 
> >One point, perhaps webpages are more analogous to 'signs'
> rather than 'publications' however?  After all, who makes the
> copies? Signwriters make one copy and mount it somewhere
> whilst traditional publishers make multiple copies to distribute.
> Imho pages are like bill-boards on the digital superhighway :-)

It is a very good analogy.
> 
> The analogy works only up to a point for me.  Signs don't carry as much
> information as a web page often does

I disagree.  The amount of information that you can gather from a web
page is relative to the time that you have available to study it.  If
you only view a web page cursorily then not much info is gathered, just
as in passing as roadside sign, but if you stop to read it in detail
then more information becomes available.

>  and the information in a sign
> doesn't change or get added to as fast as happens with web pages.

Again we are seeing dynamic roadside signs appearing so this difference
is not relevant.

>   A
> high proportion of signs are commerical/promotional/advertising/
> ephemeral in nature, and certainly a lot of web pages are too.  However,
> there are many many web pages that have a much greater and richer
> variety of information on them that is of long term value.

The volume of information available is not really relevant to the
analogy.

One area where the analogy does break down though is in the extent of
the distribution.  Roadside signs are limited in their distribution by
physical and financial constraints, whereas the only limits placed on
web sites are the number of eyeballs and the availability of access to
the web site.
> 
> In selecting items for archiving NLA looks at the content rather than
> format or how it is presented.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Margaret
> 
> Margaret E Phillips
> Director Digital Archiving
> National Library of Australia
> email: mphillips at nla.gov.au
> phone: + 61 2 6262 1140
> fax: + 61 2 6273 4322 
> 
> 
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-- 
Howard.
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