[-empyre-] archiving

[adam <adam@xs4all.nl>]

hi,

I'm also curious about this topic. I guess one thing that puzzles me is
why there is an archive like PANDORA when the same material is archived my
"The Internet Archive" (http://www.archive.org).

When I visit PANDORA I can get access to a list of sites available but
(and I only had a quick look so appologies if I have this wrong) only one
version of each site is available. Some sites are archived more than once
apparently, but I am unable to find these extra versions on the site.

When I look at the archive.org site I see many many versions of sites.

For example if I look at the "Artspace" archive of PANDORA, I see one URL:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/36417

which leads to this version of the site, archived July 2003:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/36417/20030708/www.artspace.org.au/index.html

Infact the PANDORA site states this is the only archived version of the
Artspace site.

Whereas if I look at archive.org for the same site I get this page:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.artspace.org.au

Which must contain at least 50 versions of the site from 1998 until the
present day, _including_ a version for July 2003.

I guess I am left wondering why is PANDORA necessary? I can see why
countries, states, cities, towns, and even clusters of houses might have
their own shared library of hard copy resources. This makes practical
sense, as sharing of these books cant happen unless you can get physical
access to them. Hence this kind of duplication of archive resources looks
like a good idea. However, digital archives don't have the same kind of
geographic limitations. If there is an archive in San Francisco, i can
access it in any part of Australia where there is a phone line and a
computer (and I hear Australia has a fair distribution of these ;) ... So
why the duplication of archive.orgs service? Or perhaps more accurately,
why the _partial_ duplication of archive.orgs service?

Does Pandora know something about archive.orgs technical service for
example? Is PANDORA sure it offers a better technical service than
archive.org, or there is there more to it than initially
meets the browser?

Kind regards,

adam

~/.nz