I think this should also address long term archiving. ie. we should have as policy that we will maintain the archive, and keep it backed up etc. This way our members can be confident that this will happen. Also we should maybe have some promise of preservation of URLs etc. Ultimately the service will probably move or be absorbed into a larger archive but even after that a mapping of old URLs could be maintained.
Making preservation & constant URLs part of the policy will reduce workload for staff, in that they will not need to make their own individual provision for these things. I believe that the D-Space approach is to say that they can preserve the content of file formats which the software "understands" eg. word, latex, HTML that can be stored in a common XML format, and that other formats will be preserved as a "bit stream" which is to say you can get your data back 20 years later, but they don't promise to supply it in a useful format, just the 1's and 0's you supplied. Admittedly at this stage it is content and dissemination that is the main goal, not preservation, but it's worth considering how we can get both for the best economy of resources. Christopher Gutteridge [email protected] ePrints2 Coder, Support and Stuff +44 23 8059 4833 On Wed, Jan 08, 2003 at 12:48:35 +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote: > Comments are invited on the following draft for a university policy on > the self-archiving of research output: > > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lac/archpol.html > > It is being formulated both for use at Southampton > University, and as a possible model for wider adoption, > particularly in connection with a recommended restructuring > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2373.html > of UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) > http://www.rareview.ac.uk/ > and its emulation in other countries > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2356.html > > Stevan Harnad >
