[LINK] archive.org.au

[tomk]

Sometimes I think you folk all live in lala land.
Link is filled with persons claiming to be archivists. Yet the biggest 
barrier to archivists being able to effectively carry out their mission 
in life is never discussed.

Who amongst you looks ahead twenty/forty/100 years and plans accordingly 
? [Although I realise this discussion thread is a small subset of that 
topic.]
And I'm not thinking a 1 metre squared time capsule buried under the 
lawn at 1 London Circuit with two newspapers and packet of cigarettes 
therein.

Pandora is a great start. But it somehow fails to capture the unique id 
[personality] that is Australia.
For example of the 36 hours of Youtube videos uploaded every minute of 
every day, approximately 4.6% is Australian generated content.

I think our future generations would be far more enthralled with the 
antics of some boys at the weekend barbeque as they would with the right 
honourables speech last Tuesday...
This statistic can be confirmed by the number of views that each receive 
on youtube.
The Australian content on Youtube outstrips all of the commercial 
content generated by Australian film makers, documentary makers and 
Television stations since 1906.
Yet the real history of Australia is being left to Youtube to archive.

Personally, I get a far higher level of personal pleasure out of 
watching old Australian video clips on Youtube, that somehow is not 
present when reading an old classified add from a hundred year old 
newspaper.
In other words, it is easier to "Grok" the id from video than print.

Since the Doomsday book and land taxes, our history has only been 
relevant back to the last change of Government/Ruler.

Any other option is an obvious act of Heresy and will not receive 
funding from current Government and therefore alternatives will always 
die the natural death of MTBF HDU failure rates of about, gee three-four 
years.
That is just the way it is
In 2002, Archive.org forked a copy of their data to the 
http://www.bibalex.org/isis/frontend/archive/archive_web.aspx#
Where the opening words are:


  *Web Archive- *The Internet Archive is a complete snapshot of all web
  pages on every website since 1996.

all web pages ????

And that's just the start of the revisionism.
Comparing /archive/.bibalex./org/ www./archive/./org/. used to be an 
interesting exercise.
i.e.: What was no longer at archive.org was sure to be found at bibalex.
however, the "update" syncing is now in place and that little research 
trick no longer works.

Previous high tech civilisations noted the failure of Papyrus reeds to 
survive fire flood and bugs and chose to inscribe their archives in rock 
to ensure posterity.
My guess is that the only way to retain the data is to place it on large 
format FRAMs, thence placing them in a silicon desiccating jar and 
evacuating to 35 hg. Seal Silica with molten silica. Then place silica 
in fibreglass blanket and coat with several feet of lead foil. Place 
Foil packaged item in a marble crucible lined with Zeolite and copper.
(Why does that sound familiar) with a 280 year backup schedule.
Somewhere in the storage archive, place a set of instructions preferably 
etched in copper and a smart phone with a solar panel on the back so 
that future generations can extract the data.
Bury Data Ark in several layers of concrete at a location in the SA 
desert with some half life (non-harmful) irradiating substance in small 
quantities in a pattern like ...---... suggesting that it is not a 
natural occurrence.
This will allow future Australians to recover all of the Hansard in all 
of it's glory, unrevised.

This approximates the modern day version of the dead sea scrolls. (Which 
the common man still hasnt been given access too - in it's entirety.) So 
I guess, even when the data is older than the previous Government, it is 
still subject to "additional research required".

Now that we have discovered how to secure our history from Government - 
the only questions before us is who will pay for the 30 [estimated IP 
worth saving] Petabytes of Frams?
Will it be Government ?

Oh one more question... how is one to prevent future Government 
"researchers" from getting their hands on the data cache and not 
releasing it's content to the world ?
A curious conundrum.
I suggest we worry about yesterday today and tomorrow.  The Government 
will tell us what we need to remember.
Unfortunately in essence, this means that you have all been working 
under a misapprehension since about 1066.

The above anecdotal statements not-withstanding, I am grateful to every 
archivist that works to making our history available to the average 
Australian, easily and at no cost.

The National Film Library for example believes it is a Federal 
Government profit centre and as a consequence very few Australians get 
to enjoy the benefit of their archival efforts.
someone should send them the dictionary definition of the word Library.

And then, take all of their content and upload it to youtube. Gee 
wouldnt that be something. A Government Archivist organisation actually 
doing something that worked for all the people, everywhere, around the 
world for the benefit of the whole country.
Few consider the economic barriers that are lowered by sharing our 
cultural resources in a free and informative manner.
The positive aspects such a cultural exchange has on both our tourism 
industry and our international trade efforts.
No, some archivists are only interested in keeping their 9-5 jobs and 
making sure as few as possible can actually gain access to the treasures 
in their archival vaults.

References:
http://nepp.nasa.gov/docuploads/2D8DF528-6D10-4DEA-92CB51F8B362F8A4/SharmaTeverovskyEvalFRAMarticle.pdf
http://nfsa.gov.au/collection/film-australia-collection/library/Zero-Fee-Licensing.aspx 


TomK