Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale and University of California at San Diego professor Francine Berman have this op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post that appeals to Congress for funding for the preservation of digital information. Although a topic rarely raised, vast amounts of the world’s knowledge are now stored only in digital formats which, Barksdale and Berman note, are more perishable than paper.
They cite statistics that show how quickly knowledge and information can come and go in the digital age — 44% of web sites in existence in 1998 have disappeared without a record and just try to recover all those file back-ups you made on 5 1/4-inch floppy disks. Because of the risk in having digital information just vanish, Congress appropriated $100 million in 2000 for the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.
But, in February a bill was passed and signed into law that rescinds $47 million of the approved funding, which further threatens an additional $37 million in private sector matching funds. A proposal is now on the table to restore $21.5 million to continue the program.
While $21.5 million, which strikes me as an extraordinarily paltry sum for the federal government, won’t go very far in helping to preserve or retrieve much information, the goal is to come up with a plan to save the most important data for future generations. Barksdale and Berman cite data from early satellite probes, including the Viking mission to Mars, and pre-1979 Landsat images of the earth as invaluable historical information that has already been lost forever.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:26 AM|Comments(0)
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