[LINK] Fwd: RE: Access Card site

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:07 AM 10/01/2008, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>Do any linkers have advice on this situation?

The Internet Archive offers copies of the access card web site from 
Nov 14, 2006 to Jul 04, 
2007  <http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.accesscard.gov.au/>. 
Unfortunately it does not seem to be responding at present.

This issue of old government content being taken off-line came up on 
Link with the FTA web site 
<http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2007-December/076598.html> 
and in the media 
<http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22864333-15319,00.html>.

At present all you can do is hope there is a copy of the page in some 
third party archive, as you have to wait 30 years to get it from the 
official government one.

>Is there a protocol for requesting that archived material be made 
>available without self-identification through a gatekeeper?

There is an anomaly, as web sites fall down a crack between the 
procedures for archiving internal government documents and external 
publications. Under current policy, agencies are required to archive 
their web sites and pass them to the Archives office, who will make 
them available. But Archives do not make government documents 
available for 30 years. If you want a copy of an old page in the 
interim, you can ask the agency, but they may require a formal FOI 
request and charge you money.

The National Library has copies of government paper publications, but 
they do not keep all web sites. The obvious solution would be for 
Archives, or the National Library (or both in collaboration), to 
provide an online archive of all public government web pages, but 
they are not funded to do that. The UK government did a deal with 
Archive.org to get around the problem. Of course NAA and/or NLA could 
put up the old pages with paid advertising to cover the cost.  ;-)



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU