[LIS-Forum] Fwd: Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive as OA Back-Up

[Subbiah Arunachalam]

Friends:

Here is some very good news fro Stevan Harnad.
 
 Thanks to the efforts of Peter Suber in
 collaboration with Brewster
 Kahle, the Internet Archive
    

http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.archive.org%2F
 will now begin serving not only as a back-up for
 institutional OA
 archives worldwide, but also as an OA archive for
 those researchers
 who are not affiliated with universities or research
 institutions with
 OA archives of their own.
 
Here is the announcement from Peter Suber's Open
 Access News

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_03_fosblogarchive.html#a111297430877667121
 followed by some excerpt's from Peter's Sparc Open
 Access Newsletter:
 
     More on Brewster Kahle and the OA projects of
 the Internet Archive
 
     Paul Boutin, The Archivist: Brewster Kahle made
 a copy of
     the Internet. Now, he wants your files, Slate,
 April 7,
     2005. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116329/
 
     Excerpt: 'Kahle is less the Internet's crazy
 aunt --the tycoon
     who can't stand to throw anything away-- than
 its evangelical
     librarian. "The history of digital materials in
 companies' hands is
     one of...loss," he tells me in a rushed meeting.
 Like it or not, the
     Web is the world's library now, and Kahle
 doesn't trust the guys who
     shelve the books....Instead of creating another
 startup that crawls
     the Web to make money, Brewster used his
 millions to preserve as much
     knowledge as possible and --just as important--
 make it accessible to
     anyone who can get to a computer....The Internet
 Archive isn't just
     the Wayback Machine --the nonprofit's two dozen
or so employees have
     filled an equal amount of disk space with
 uploaded film collections,
     presidential debates, Bugs Bunny cartoons, and
 news broadcasts from
     the Middle East. The archive is especially keen
 on books. They've
     scanned about 25,000 of them so far as part of
 the Million Book
     Project, a collaboration with Indian and Chinese
 agencies to
     create an online library in the place of
 bricks-and-mortar reading
     rooms....The final step in building the archive
 into a true global
     library: getting you to contribute. Ourmedia, a
 project launched
     two weeks ago, offers free, unlimited, permanent
 storage of your
     videos, photos, Word files, podcasts?anything
 that's not porn and
     not covered by someone else's copyright. The one
 catch: The files,
     stored on Internet Archive servers, will be
 freely available to
     anyone in the world.'
 
     (Peter Suber: If you missed it, see this
 announcement from SOAN for 4/2/05:
    

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-05.htm#oara
     'Many publishing researchers don't have OA
 repositories in their
     institutions or disciplines. The missing piece
 of the puzzle is an
     OAI-compliant "universal repository" that will
 accept eprints from
     any scholar in any discipline. I'm very happy to
 say in public for
     the first time that Brewster Kahle of the
 Internet Archive (IA)
     has agreed to launch just such a repository. I'm
 working with the
     technical staff of the IA to set it up now. Not
 only will it host
     new content for scholars with no other place to
 deposit their work,
     but it will offer to preserve all the other
 OAI-compliant repositories
     in the world. The IA's proven commitment to open
 access and long-term
     preservation make this a most exciting
 prospect.')
 

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-05.htm#oara
 
     (2) Many publishing researchers don't have OA
 repositories in their
     institutions or disciplines.  The missing piece
 of the puzzle is an
     OAI-compliant "universal repository" that will
 accept eprints from
     any scholar in any discipline.  I'm very happy
 to say in public for
     the first time that Brewster Kahle of the
 Internet Archive (IA)
     has agreed to launch just such a repository. 
 I'm working with
     the technical staff of the IA to set it up now. 
 Not only will it
     host new content for scholars with no other
 place to deposit their
     work, but it will offer to preserve all the
 other OAI-compliant
     repositories in the world.  The IA's proven
 commitment to open access
     and long-term preservation make this a most
 exciting prospect.
     Moreover, the good people at the Creative
 Commons are working on
     a drag-and-drop interface for depositing new
 eprints in the IA
     repository.  More details later.
 
     The Internet Archive
     http://www.archive.org/
 
     (1) The process of OA archiving is not
 intrinsically time-consuming
     or intimidating, but even low barriers are too
 high when authors
     are desperately short of time.  One piece of
 good news is that
     we are making progress on automating the
 generation of metadata.
     This will reduce both the time and the
 difficulty of self-archiving
     and one day may automate the entire process
 after an author clicks
     "yes".  Another piece of good news is that a new
 study by Leslie
     Carr and Stevan Harnad based on "two months of
 submissions for a
     mature repository" shows that "the amount of
 time spent entering
     metadata would be as little as 40 minutes per
 year for a highly
     active researcher."  The problem isn't a real
 time-sink but a
     groundless fear of a time-sink.
 
     Leslie Carr and Stevan Harnad, Keystroke
 Economy: A Study of the
     Time and Effort Involved in Self-Archiving.  A
 preprint put online
     March 15, 2005. 
 http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_03_13_fosblogarchive.html#a111100690216360884
 
     Automating or semi-automating the archiving
 deposit process won't help
     scholars without deposit rights at an OA,
 OAI-compliant repository,
     and a universal repository won't help scholars
 who believe they are
     too busy to bother.  That's why it's important
 that we're seeing
     progress on both fronts at once.  Each
 development removes another
     excuse for not archiving.
  

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