October 28, 2003

Long-term archives

A mini-case study on Harvard's digital archives:

I had never given much thought to long-term storage and archiving of content. Well, I did to the extent that I typically advocated XML and other standards-based technology--mainly so content and data would outlast any particular software system or application. But I had never thought much about truly long-term storage—what some in the field like to refer to as the "100 year digital object"—until I was engaged by the State of Washington to help study the feasibility of creating a digital archive. Part of my analysis was to interview other organizations that had undertaken similar initiatives. The most interesting interview was with Harvard University.