X-Message-Number: 6351
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject: Fwd: Preserving Digital Information & EurekAlert
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 96 10:50:21 +0200


Forward of letter <> 
from Scout <>:

Preserving Digital Information, produced by a task force commissioned by
The Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA) and The Research Libraries
Group (RLG) is available on the Internet. The purpose of this 64-page study
"was to investigate the means of ensuring 'continued access indefinitely
into the future of records stored in digital electronic form.'" The authors
consisted of individuals from industry, museums, archives and libraries,
scholarly societies, and government,  among others. Its major findings
include: "1) The first line of defense against loss of valuable digital
information rests with the creators, providers and owners of digital
information; 2) Long-term preservation of digital information on a scale
adequate for the demands of future research and scholarship will require a
deep infrastructure capable of supporting a distributed system of digital
archives; 3) A critical component of the digital archiving infrastructure
is the existence of a sufficient number of trusted organizations capable of
storing, migrating and providing access to digital collections; 4) A
process of certification for digital archives is needed to create an
overall climate of trust about the prospects of preserving digital
information; and 5) Certified digital archives must have the right and duty
to exercise an aggressive rescue function as a fail-safe mechanism for
preserving valuable digital information that is in jeopardy of destruction,
neglect or abandonment by its current custodian."  The report is available
at present in Adobe Acrobat .pdf, Microsoft Word 6.0, and ASCII rich text
formats. An HTML version will be available shortly.
http://www.rlg.org/ArchTF/
ftp://ftp.rlg.org/pub/archtf/
ftp to ftp.rlg.ort
change directory to put/archtf


EurekAlert, a service of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, presents the latest news on research in science,
medicine and technology. News releases are submitted by academic
institutions, journals, government sources, and non-profit agencies. The
site is designed to be used by journalists, research institutions and
members of the public. EurekAlert is updated daily and contains
an archive that is searchable by key word, contributor institution type,
and geography. Interesting stories presently available include the finding
that breast-feeding may reduce risk of breast cancer, attempts
by researchers to reduce the environmental impact of making computer
chips, and the effect of doctor and patient age on medical decisions.
Each story is abstracted and contains contact information
and hyptertext links when available. Submissions are free at this time,
but a posting fee will be imposed in the future.
http://www.eurekalert.org/
less graphical: http://www.eurekalert.org/E-lert/current/mainpage.shtml


David S. Stodolsky      PGP KeyID: B830DF31       
    Tel.: +45 38 33 03 30    Fax: +45 38 33 88 80


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