Thursday 28th of March 2024

National Archive

Below is the best part of an email I just recieved from Edgar Cook of the Digital Archiving Section of the National Library. Obviously I just want to say yes, but I have emboldened the part which I'd like people to read. Essentially I'm asking, in a general way, for people's consent that their comments be archived in perpetuity. If anyone knows anything about the law that I should, let me know also.

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Dear Mr Alcorn

Request for permission to archive Your Democracy web site

The National Library of Australia aims to build a comprehensive collection of Australian publications to ensure that Australians have access to their documentary heritage now and in the future. The Library has traditionally collected items in print, but it is also committed to preserving electronic publications of lasting cultural value.

PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, was set up by the Library in 1996 to enable the archiving and provision of long-term access to online Australian publications. Since then we have been identifying online publications and archiving those that we consider have national significance.

We would like to include the Your Democracy web site in the PANDORA Archive and I would be grateful if you would let me know whether you are willing to permit us to do so, that is, grant us a licence under the Copyright Act 1968, to copy your publication into the Archive and to provide public online access to it via the Internet. This means that you would grant the Library permission to retain your publication in the Archive and to provide public access to it in perpetuity. We assume that in granting permission all contributors to your publication are informed and in agreement that their work will be archived by the National Library.

We would like to re-archive your publication periodically to record significant additions and changes.

If you are willing to grant us such a licence, please complete the short form at the end of this message and return it to me.

There are some benefits to you as a publisher in having your publication archived by the Library. If you grant us a copyright licence, the Library will take the necessary preservation action to keep your publication accessible as hardware and software changes over time. The Library will catalogue your publication and add the record to the National Bibliographic Database (a database of catalogue records shared by over 1,100 Australian libraries), as well as to our own online catalogue. This will increase awareness of your publication among researchers using libraries.

Sounds good to me

No Probs... I hope it means recognition into perpetuity not oblivion to eternity...

The National Library needs to be congratulated ...

I put my hand up. I might have dobbed Your Democracy in ;-) I hope this site will be also issued with the unique ISSN ... Antipodean bohemian Steve Meacham explains the reasons why the Pandora Project is in the public interest much better than I ever could: 'Many of the earliest Australian websites may now appear crude, amateur and irrelevant. But, says Bruns, so did the first attempts at long fiction by 18th-century novelists, which were also "much maligned … seen by some as an artistically worthless form of cheap entertainment for the masses, and an agent of moral corruption". By the time of Dickens and Tolstoy, the novel had become one of our most respected cultural forms - capable not just of reflecting the emotional conflicts of a changing society but also of being a vehicle for the exchange of ideas' Memories for Future Generation in the Making Jozef

Agree

Sounds fine Hamish. Can't see why anyone would object given we have posted on a site available to all.

We're Archived

With no negative comment on the above, I have accepted the invitation for us to be included in the National Library Archive. I have added a note at the bottom of the page to this effect, as any contributors should be aware of this.

It's great news. The archive is here.