ACQNET: Two Major Reports on Digital Preservation

[Ed. Note: This posting was received by ACQNET on 8-30-00]

Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 13:54:22 -0400
From: Gerry Mckiernan (Iowa State U.) <GMCKIERN_at_gwgate.lib.iastate.edu>
Subject: Two Major Reports on Digital Preservation

           _Two Major Reports on Digital Preservation_

   I recently learned about two major reports relating to the issues 
surrounding digital preservation and believe that they will be of interest 
to my web colleagues.

   The first of these was prepared by Gail Hodge of Information International 
Associates on behalf of the International Council for Scientific and Technical 
Information  (ICSTI) [http://www.icsti.org/ ]. The publication, _Digital 
Electronic Archiving: The State of the Art and the State of the Practice_ was 
published in April 1999. It is accessible at the following addresses:

             http://www.icsti.org/icsti/whats_new.html 

             http://www.icsti.org/icsti/99ga/digarch99_TOCP.pdf 
                     [Table of Contents]

             http://www.icsti.org/icsti/99ga/digarch99_ExecP.pdf 
                     [Executive Summary]

             http://www.icsti.org/icsti/99ga/digarch99_MainP.pdf 
                      [Main Report]

  The second is a report prepared by a committee for the National Academy of 
Sciences (NAS) and provides recommendations on the digital preparedness and 
the Library of Congress in collecting and preserving digital resources. A 
general summary of the report recently appeared in the New York Times on 
July 27 2000 

"Saving The Nation's Digital Legacy" / by Katie Hafner 
( http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/circuits/articles/27libr.html )

[NB: This article was also published as "Library of Congress Lags in Archiving 
Digital Preservation" in the July 26th NYTimes Web edition ]

[NOTE: A free account is required to access this article]

The title of the report is _LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of 
Congress_. 

The Library of Congress (LoC) commissioned the study. The report's  
recommendations are more fully described in a press release available from 
the LoC 

[http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2000/00-100.html ]

  A *pre-publication* copy of the report is available at:

       http://www.nap.edu/books/0309071445/html/ 

/Gerry McKiernan
Theoretical Librarian
Iowa State University
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck_at_iastate.edu