[LINK] Internet Archival

[Roger Clarke]

A mini case study in Internet archival.

A year or so ago, I hot-linked from my family history pages to an 
obituary on a Sussex newspaper's web-site.  It was a Jan 2008 entry. 
Unusually, I failed to put a mirror on my own site or even back it up 
on my disk.

I had reason to click on it this morning, and it was dead.

The webmistress replied (helpfully, and at 08:45 Monday, her time):

>Unfortunately I've had to clear out a lot of old artwork and documents
from our server as space was at a premium. However, as you have the date
of the public notice you could contact Eastbourne Library. They might be
able to look up the newspaper for you to locate it and send you a pdf of
the page it appeared on.
>
>You may find these links useful:
>http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/libraries/find/eastbourne/
>http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/libraries/reference/download.htm
>http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/8294EE2F-BB90-420C-91A6-6854208C3737/0/PeriodicalslistSept09.pdf

Silly me.

1.  Publication archives are a public cost, not a private one
2.  Disks cost money
3.  Maintaining old directory structures every time a new broom
     comes along and re-designs the site, costs even more
4.  Years into the born-digital era, public archival continues to be
     by means of hard-copy, not machine-readable copy
5.  The debate probably hasn't even reached the point of discussing
     whether open-content archival formats need to be specified


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University