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‘The great Web site die-off: Why it matters’
September 3, 2009 | 8:45 am
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By David Rothman
“…We will soon be entering a period when a number of sites will go dark because of sheer neglect.” – Roy Tennant, writing for Library Journal.
The TeleRead take: He and others such as John Mark Ockerbloom worry not just about the continued operation of valuable sites but also about the longevity of material posted to the Web. For example, to mention an Ockerbloom-cited example, what if a site owner has cancer? Or—closer to home—a heart attack, which I suffered last fall?
Roy himself runs an eco-related site, StanislausRiver.org, and notes that “I’m only one ill-considered walk across the street from annihilation. Should that happen, there is no clear path for any of my heirs to migrate this site into the hands of someone willing and able to take it under their control. It would die. Not immediately, but not long after my credit card no longer clears.”
Luckily Paul Biba would be around if a bus or fatal heart attack hit me, but as the operator of the oldest English-language site on general e-book news and views, I’m still far from smug about the current preservation situation.
The real answer
At a macro level, I’d suggest two important solutions—first, a well-stocked national digital library system that would archive more than books; and, second, the accelerated development of ePub and related standards for e-text. The longer it takes for standards to catch on, the more material may vanish. The move toward networked books, bringing in material from a number of sources, including Web sites, will just aggravate the problem.
Meanwhile,in case you’re curious, the Wayback Machine offers far from a complete preservation of TeleRead.org and an earlier site on the old ClarkNet. It archives just a fraction of our material. I wish Brewster Kahle all kinds of luck in changing this. Please note the existence of the Born Digital initiative from the Library of Congress, but like the Machine, its scope has been limited so far.
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Comments:
To be blunt, there are some things that simply do not need to survive their creators. I think the idea that everything we create needs to survive beyond us is a conceit… it’s not all that important.
On the other hand, most web-based material is actually stored on local computers before it is posted to the web, with the exception of aggregate sites like this one. So, even if, for instance, I got hit by a Mack Truck, my wife would still have access to the material on my defunct web pages through my home computer. She could use it, or delete it, as she will.
In short, I don’t think the problem is all Roy cracks it up to be.
But Steve, what if you become a literary legend and people want to read your old commentary? It’s so, so hard to know what’ll be of future interest and what won’t. Look at all the old movies and radio shows that have vanished—to the dismay of popular-culture specialists—for want of proper archiving.
Thanks,
David
Do I honestly believe I will become anything other than just another one of the almost seven billion people on this world, or that my output actually will matter to anyone besides myself? Is it even important that anyone remembers that any particular set of words came from me? Frankly, no. I’m just a part-time hack writer… I’m no Shakespeare or Franklin. Archiving my life’s work, or that of many others, isn’t worth the effort. I fully expect that any books or commentary of mine from today will be good for nothing but laughs to the readers of the future, and I don’t care to supply gags to posterity once I’m worm food.
Unimportant information eventually gets forgotten, as it should be. Important information tends to get remembered, even when we no longer remember who thought of it first. Will it matter to me whether anyone remembers I thought of something first? Heck no… I’ll be dead.
Steve: (1) Leave it to future lit critics. (2) Not all writers–both the book and Web varieties–write for just the present. Thanks. David
Re #2: Such writers should know how to archive their own material, then. Anything lost is their own fault.
Re #1: I don’t care about today’s lit critics…
Well, Steve, let’s just sum things up and say I think the immortality-seeking option should be there for writers who want it. Also, keep in mind that most writers would rather focus on being writers than techies or archivists. Beyond that, how do they know their great-great-great-grandchildren will be conscientious archivists? Maybe you don’t care. But others might.
OK, you get the last word if you’d like.
Thanks,
David
Naw, I’m good.
Not even archivists believe that EVERYTHING is worth preserving.
Choices need to be made. Bills have to be paid.
Archiving digital data is not cheap.
Who is going to pay for any effort to capture/preserve for time immemorial every bit (or byte) that appears on the web?