Inquiry: know-how about digital preservation archiving

["Richard L. Hess" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I apologize for the cross-posting. I hope that not too many of you are on 
all three lists.

This is being passed on for my colleague Henry Gladney. He and I are both 
members of the Audio Engineering Society Technical Committee on Archives 
Restoration and Digital Libraries.

Henry has been asked by the Library of Congress to research the commercial 
sector to make sure that all items of interest have been uncovered. The 
last thing that the Library of Congress wishes to do is to reinvent the 
wheel with their $100,000,000 appropriation for digital archives.

The goal of this Congressional Appropriation is to develop a national 
program to preserve the burgeoning amounts of digital information, 
especially materials that are created only in digital formats, to ensure 
their accessibility for current and future generations. As I read the 
attached information the Library of Congress has been given the lead in 
this project and is to work in conjunction with other agencies and 
libraries. The attached (if it comes through) document provides the 
appropriation legislation wording and some other background information.

If you are aware of a commercial solution or are a provider of a commercial 
solution, please contact Dr. Gladney (see below). If you are aware of a 
large-scale project planned or undertaken undertaken by a corporation for 
archiving their own assets, please contact Dr. Gladney.

This project will benefit us all as it will provide advancement for a 
unified framework to all of us under which we will be able to archive our 
own projects.

Please respond to Dr. Gladney by close of business June 8th and please feel 
free to pass this on.

Thank you very much.

Richard L. Hess
Principal Consultant
National TeleConsultants
Glendale, CA
Personal: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.richardhess.com

==============original message====================

On behalf of an advisory committee convened by the Library of Congress, I am
writing to ask for your help. Deanna Marcum, president of the Council on
Information and Library Resources and a member of the advisory committee,
has asked for a quick survey of technology and projects that would inform
the Library in establishing a preservation program for "born digital"
content.

In case your associates are not aware of the project that stimulates this
inquiry, I am attaching an article from the New York Times and a summary of
the Congressional appropriation statement.  For a comprehensive view of the
underlying challenge, I recommend LC 21: A Digital Strategy for the Library
of Congress, published by the National Academy Press about a year ago.

Among the questions identified in the report is what relationships should
exist between the Library's digital initiative and similar activities in
other institutions.  In setting priorities for the digital preservation
program, I expect that the advisory committee will seek outside views about
this and will be particularly interested in comments from organizations that
have considered their own versions of that question.

The committee is well informed about related activities in the federal
government and universities. However, it is missing insight into the
commercial and industrial sectors. The scope of the eventual archive is all
kinds of "born digital" materials: books, papers, images, audio, and video.
I believe that the Library's biggest challenge will be the immense amount of
content available.  The advisory committee will grapple with an initial
selection policy, but collection policy is likely to be a perpetual
question.

To help the advisory committee achieve a quick start, I would be grateful
for your help in identifying a few people who could lead us to understand in
broad terms what is going on and what pools of expertise might be consulted.
Please contact me at the address below.

Regards,  Henry

Henry Gladney              (408)867-5454
20044 Glen Brae Drive, Saratoga CA 95070
http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/

P.S.  Please feel free to forward this request.

Attachment: Congressional Appropriation Language.doc
Description: MS-Word document