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Web Sites Need to Be Saved for Good, Experts Say

by Terrence O'Brien on January 27, 2009 at 12:54 PM



Living in a digital world was supposed to mean that all information would be at our fingertips at all times, for the rest of time. Unfortunately, things aren't quite working out that way; many historians fear that lots of material is being lost to a digital black hole, thanks to the high turnover of information on the Internet.

Lynne Brindley, head of the British Library, points to two sites, in particular, that have recently disappeared and taken all record of their existence with them: the White House site of the George W. Bush administration and sites pertaining to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. These sites, and much of their accompanying information (such as the booklet '100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration'), are no longer accessible to the public. This loss of information might just be a precursor to the large gaps in the public record that are sure to result from more and more sites' being removed, updated and transferred.

Even offline records have been lost, or are in danger of being lost, as the technology originally used to create or archive them -- like that used in tape drives and laser discs, for instance -- becomes obsolete. Saving this information, though, is necessary for keeping a complete historical record. Thankfully, some companies (such as Google and Microsoft) have begun partnering with libraries and other institutions to preserve data for posterity. [From: The Observer]


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Tags: data loss, data retention, DataLoss, DataRetention, history, internet, laser disc, LaserDisc, obsolete, record, records, web

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