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Saving Digital History

Posted by timothy on from the problem-that-keeps-getting-discovered dept.

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.

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. one persons trash... by trefoil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is another persons treasure.. I'd say just save it all and allow others to sift through and decide what is worthwhile and what is worthless.. just like the library..

  2. skip slashdot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No need to add slashdot as one of the website. They keep reposting stories here as an initiative to preserve their own history.

  3. WaybackMachine by ChunKing · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    --
    cogito ergo sig...
  4. Something Old, Something New by SparklesMalone · · Score: 5, Funny

    How much energy should humanity spend remembering its past? I love history, but frankly I'd rather they fund more discoveries (i.e. NASA) than archive drivel like my slashdot musings.

  5. Re:New Media Doesn't Last by Mostly+a+lurker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, but this idea will not fly on a number of grounds. Consider how many punch cards would be needed to save even 4.7GB of data (contents of one DVD). It would take over 50,000,000 cards (even if they did not contain sequence numbers). The creation and storage costs would be astronomical and reading them back in to find any data you wanted would take weeks -- just for a single DVDs worth of data. Further, much of the most useful data (images and sound recordings) are more difficult to store on punch cards than almost any other alternative medium.