[-empyre-] Thank you to our archiving guests

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net>]

Dear -empyre-
This month's topic of Preserving Our Online Heritage has
explored  a variety of issues surrounding the collection and
arching of digital records,  whether they be world wide web
research or cultural documents, or one of the many varieties
of internet art. Acquisition and conservation measures are
more than just copying  files onto  terabyte storage disks
for  later retrieval, migration or emulation. As our guests
have vigorously discussed, they involve many ethical,
political, taxonomical and technical  issues.

I would especially like to thank these  guests who are
leaders in preservation of  web resources :  Margaret
Phillips, Paul Koerbin and Gerard Clifton from the PANDORA
internet archive at the National Library of Australia; Nancy
McGovern, Digital Preservation Officer at Cornell University
Library; Sharmin (Tinni) Choudhury, the software engineer
for PANIC digital preservation project; Meta data standards
expert Dr Simon Pockley from Deakin University; and  Luciana
Duranti (UBC), Yvette Hackett and Jim Suderman from
InterPARES 2, Canada.

Thankyou enormously to Doran Golan from ComputerFineArts.com
and Valerie leBlanc from Facts and Artifacts  for
representing the collector and artist perspective in this
discussion. Unfortunately both Graham Crawford from Tool,
and Kevin McGarry from Rhizome could not join us due to
illness.

Several of the issues which arose in our discussion,
including the ephemerality of net art, and what we should
and shouldn't archive,  are also being discussed
simultaneously on  CRUMB
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-media-curating.html.
Please check out their archives as well.

That brings us to the end of a great month, and please join
us  for next months topic of Interactive video.

Thank you all once again.

Melinda Rackham
artist | curator
www.subtle.net