Slashdot Mirror
Saving Digital History
Gavinsblog writes "The Washington Post
is reporting that the Library of Congress in the U.S. plans to initiate the $100 million National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). It is hoped that the project will lead to the preservation of data that is constantly changing on the Internet. But I wonder who will choose what is worth saving?" This may remind you of the LOC's effort to preserve and digitize the audio collection in the National Recording Registry.
Isn't this already being done by the WaybackMachine (http://www.waybackmachine.org)?
cogito ergo sig...
From the article:
On top of the $5 million the library received for planning the initiative in 2000, the plan approved yesterday releases another $20 million of funding to develop a system for evaluating and storing digital information. Just as the library receives more than 20,000 printed pieces each day but keeps less than half, it now faces the herculean task of deciding what digital information should be saved for future generations.
--
The library doesn't keep all of the printed information it receives, keeping all of the information online is an enormous, if not possible task. The archive.org has terrabytes upon terrabytes of data, and they don't even come close to having everything that was on the web at any one time. With the budget they're talking about, keeping all of this information would most definitely not be possible.
I believe you are talking about The Really Big Button That Doesn't Do Anything.
A novel concept in its time, it was a strangely addictive big red button on a website. Established in 1994, and linking back to itsef, it was more repetitive than Taco's story postings.
As interest in it waned, though, they added a message board-ish thing that let people comment on the button. As it was quickly misused, the best comments were left and the worst deleted.
There, the very first MS bashing in large amounts began with comments like, "Huh? A button that does nothing? Must be a new Microsoft product..."
Although dead at the age of 5, its final resting place is in its original home, Spatula City.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Google does not evict anything out of their cache. They just keep adding capacity. Hence Google can already see changes to websites. Granted I'm sure that this data isn't durable though.