Re: Archive Preservation Considerations

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_COGSCI.SOTON.AC.UK>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 08:19:55 -0400

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998 22:27:28 +0100, Alan Lesgold <al+_at_pitt.edu> wrote:

>The Walker article, combined with Harnad's comments, present a picture that
>seems ideal. However, it does not attend sufficiently to the issue of archival
>preservation... My point is that we face an urgent need to
>develop and finance enduring archival preservation for at least the modest
>share of our scholarly output that is still worth reading after a decade.

>1. Multiple sites store independent copies of journals in formats with
>relatively long lifetimes, such as CD-ROM or DVD.

CD-ROM is not a format, it is a storage medium (but format is a consideration
too: see the posting by Mark Doyle of American Physical Society in the
"Savings...30/70..." thread). xxx is mirrored in 12 countries.

>2. Support for those sites comes from a continuing income stream provided by
>libraries and scholarly societies. The income stream must be sufficient to
>support copying of all media every five years as well as conservative
>amortization of server hardware to assure up-to-date operations and high
>accessibility.

Not strong enough: The system may need to be prepared to upgrade and update
on a more ongoing basis than that; but the virtue of making xxx the locus
of more and more of the literature in all disciplines is that many eggs can
be collectively tended in one basket.

Stevan Harnad
Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 19:17:43 BST

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