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.

Comments

WaybackMachine

[ChunKing]

Isn't this already being done by the WaybackMachine (http://www.waybackmachine.org)?

Actually..

[NotAnotherReboot]

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.

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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.