[LINK] Fwd: [aliaACTive] digitization - preserving born-digital material [Scanned]

[Antony Barry]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Robyn Ellard" <Robyn.Ellard at alia.org.au>
> Date: 20 January 2010 11:41:03 AM AEDT
> To: <aliaactive at lists.alia.org.au>, <aliapublic at lists.alia.org.au>, <alialteducators at lists.alia.org.au>
> Subject: [aliaACTive] digitization - preserving born-digital material [Scanned]
> 
>  
> Britain’s major libraries will get new legal powers to archive free websites, as reported recently by The Guardian. The government has responded to the importance and urgency of recording Britain's cultural, scientific and political history. It took British Library and National Library of Scotland executives however to alert them to the fact that the Act establishing the powers was passed in 2003, yet parliament had not enacted those powers in the intervening years. 
>  
> According to The Guardian “The libraries warned that they had now lost millions of pages recording events such as the MPs' expenses scandal, the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the Iraq war, and would lose millions more, because they were not legally empowered to "harvest" these sites.”
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> While publishers in the UK are already required to deposit all printed newspapers, electronic newspapers will not be covered by the new powers.
>  
> The UK situation is in stark contrast to Australia’s. The National Library of Australia established Pandora in 1996 to “collect and provide long-term access to selected online publications and web sites that are about Australia, are by an Australian author on a subject of social, political, cultural, religious, scientific or economic significance and relevance to Australia, or are by an Australian author of recognised authority and make a contribution to international knowledge”. At the end of 2009, Pandora contained 3.53 TB of data, consisting of more than 79 million files.
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> In the area of preservation of born-digital material, Australia can be proud of its world class digital archive and its international contribution to the documentation of national archiving procedures, guidelines and schemes etc.
>  
> Links to more information:
> A note on links: if you are having problems opening the links in this email, please cut and paste the links into your browser.
> The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/27/libraries-internet
> Pandora: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/
> ALIA's copyright information service: http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy/copyright/
>  
> Claudia Davies AALIA (CP)
> Qld Local Liaison Officer
> Australian Library and Information Association
> PO Box 6335 Kingston ACT 2604
> p 0407 964 967 
> e claudia.davies at alia.org.au
> http://www.alia.org.au
>  
>