[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 20, Issue 4

Sat May 8 18:32:04 PDT 2021

Dear all, 

At CHM, we are very interested in archiving Internet historical materials. As Jake points out we do have paper IENs in the ARC/NIC collection, and as John Levine points out we are a mirror archive for new RFCs as they come out; we set that up with Heather Flanagan and others a few years ago. We’ve had some exploratory discussions with ISOC and IETF over the years about preserving other materials and remain keen, especially as our digital repository continues to grow and we begin to open up digital access to the collection even more with what we’re calling OpenCHM, more on that below. 

In terms of which archive is best, pretty much all major universities, collecting museums, libraries, and archives have professional archivists, climate controlled environments, disaster plans, and so on, and they do collaborate with each other. 

As Jake and I advised at the IETF BoF on networking history we did in 2013, It’s more important to actually get historical materials OUT of garages, storage spaces, hard drives, and mailing lists and INTO a serious archiving institution than worry overmuch about which one, or particular disaster scenarios. California has earthquakes. But CHM's main paper and media archive, which is a separate facility about 15 miles from the public museum, is a modern single story steel frame building and an extremely low earthquake risk; it’s also nowhere near wildfires. It doesn’t carry the flood risks that many underground facilities do, nor the tornado risks of the midwest. As Dave Crocker pointed out, physical sites are even less important for digital materials, which we’ve always extensively mirrored and are now getting even more cloud mirroring. We keep original media for software and video in a special cold room. 

Besides long term preservation, one key consideration is access, below. Another is to try to put like materials with like for the convenience of researchers, rather than scattering them. From that point of view, either CHM or Babbage is an extremely solid choice. On our end we have networking related materials of all kinds, and the ARC/NIC materials <https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102706170> that Jake directed and then preserved are the “anchor tenant" of our ARPAnet/Internet/Engelbart holdings with about 350 boxes of paper plus some digital materials. We also have a very active oral history program, with well over 1000 oral histories including hundreds with networking pioneers, and a dedicated Internet History Program <http://computerhistory.org/nethistory> which I started and have directed since 2009.

In terms of access, CHM has had our catalog online and searchable <https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/> for over a decade. You can narrow the search by physical objects, documents, software, video, images, etc. If documents are scanned, the PDFs usually appear right in the record. We do retain the original documents in the collection as well. If documents are not scanned, we have the same kind of research room as any other archive or library special collection; i.e. you make an appointment and then archivists pull the boxes you want to go through. On the pure digital side, we collect software and source code as well as other kinds of digital content, and provide access in a number of ways. 

The museum is right now in the early stages of an initiative called OpenCHM. When done this will make the collection searchable in even more sophisticated ways, and offer a standard API that outsiders can use to access materials in the collection with their own tools. They can then integrate them into their own  online exhibits or other interpretations. This should be a real step toward what are called “federated archives,” where you can mix and match materials independent of where the originals are held. OpenCHM is also starting to experiment with AI to automatically suggest connections within the collection; for instance between a name in a document, a mention in an oral history, and a physical object on an exhibit floor.

As to which media outlast others, it’s interesting that most new media are more ephemeral than the ones that came before.... Clay tablets were so durable they baked hard in fires. Paper is more fragile but can still last millennia. The Cloud today is moving closer to an oral tradition. As Brewster Kahle told me in the ‘90s, “the good thing about digital media is that you can save everything. The bad thing about digital media is you can lose everything.” Let’s all try to save some of the important stuff, whether with us or another archiving institution! 

Best, Marc

Marc Weber <http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/>  |   marc at webhistory.org  |   +1 415 282 6868
Curatorial Director, Internet History Program
Computer History Museum, 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043
computerhistory.org/nethistory  |  Co-founder, Web History Center and Project

> On May 8, 2021, at 14:24, Jake Feinler via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I am jumping into the middle of this and haven’t seen what went before, but thought you would like to know
> 
> A full set of (paper) IENs is contained in the collection I gave to the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA..
> 
> And you will be amused to know that when I told a group at ISOC that my wish was for a computer storage medium that lasted as long as paper, everyone laughed and thought I was joking.  I wasn’t.  So far I have lived through:  library catalogs on cards, microfilm, microfiche, punched cards, computer tapes (both 7 and 9 track), floppy disks, small and large hard disks, thumb drives, information servers, the web, and the cloud (and probably a few I’ve forgotten).  Each has had more or less a 10 year time frame, before we moved on to something else and obsoleted everything that came before.  And try to find something that stands still on the web - now you see it, now you don’t. True, all these processes are faster and more portable, but not necessarily more durable. I say, historians should not count paper out, until they have something that can outlast it.
> 
> My 2c for what it is worth.
> 
> Jake
> 
>> On May 8, 2021, at 12:00 PM, internet-history-request at elists.isoc.org wrote:
>> 
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>> Today's Topics:
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>>  1. Fwd:  [xbbn] Re: Museum archiving (was: Re: IENs) (John Day)
>> 
>> 
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 14:41:47 -0400
>> From: John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net>
>> To: BBN Alumni <xbbn at xbbn.org>, internet-history
>> 	<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> Subject: [ih] Fwd:  [xbbn] Re: Museum archiving (was: Re: IENs)
>> Message-ID: <34EF09B8-F26E-49B0-B982-096AA220DD13 at comcast.net>
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>> Sorry forgot Reply-All
>> 
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>> 
>>> From: John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [ih] [xbbn] Re: Museum archiving (was: Re: IENs)
>>> Date: May 8, 2021 at 14:39:47 EDT
>>> To: vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com>
>>> 
>>> Yes, I know. They weren?t my concern. Generally, it isn?t librarians who have these ideas. They understand. It is further up the chain that there are barbaric ideas. Much of CBI is available on-line. I thought that once they scanned material it became available.
>>> 
>>> They are currently renovating the ?math building? at Illinois. Altgeld is one of the oldest buildings on campus and the original library, now the math library. It has a glorious reading room with those great ?working and learning? murals of the early 20thC and they are making sure that they preserve and repair the glass floors of the stacks!! (Only have to light every other row on two floors.) The building and the math dept deserve each other. The floor plan has half floors and other twists and turns that make it almost a maze, and the secreted Bourbaki?s office!  ;-)
>>> 
>>>> On May 8, 2021, at 12:07, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com <mailto:vgcerf at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> that is not the case here. Univ MN Library retains the originals.
>>>> v
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 11:36 AM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>> The thing that scares me are the administrators who think that that because the material has been scanned the original artifacts are no longer needed and can be discarded. It is far more important than that. At best, it means the artifacts don?t need to be handled as often, which as the centuries go on becomes more and more critical.
>>>> 
>>>> John
>>>> 
>>>>> On May 8, 2021, at 11:12, David Walden <dave.walden.family at gmail.com <mailto:dave.walden.family at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> i have been an amateur but serious historian for a couple of decades and accessing archives and observing professional historians over that time.  I think commitment to scanning/digitizing documents is important. Archives with tight budgets employing people not used to engineering level salaries and other compensation tend to see scanning/digitizing as *very*, perhaps prohibitively, expensively.  Document contributors on this list might be able to help them think about digitizing costs and methods.  
>>>>> 
>>>>> Back maybe to the sense of Dave's question, archives may not be interested in everything one has to give.  It may take more than one archive to find homes for one's materials.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Finding aids are important, as Craig noted.  An archive depending on google-like searches is less desirable in my view.  
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On May 8, 2021, at 10:11 AM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> A slight correction, Craig. 
>>>>>> I am a recognized historian in the History of Science and Cartography, primarily 17thC-18thC China and published widely. I have spent considerable time in archives across Asia and Europe and with private collectors. My experience goes well beyond computer museums, as I told Dave off-list, including junk rooms in the Vatican. (Sometimes one finds things in the oddest places.) ;-)
>>>>>> You are right about access. Electronic copies can be nice, but there are important things about provenance, etc. that one can only learn by seeing the artifact itself.
>>>>>> John
>>>>>>> On May 8, 2021, at 08:50, Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net <mailto:craig at tereschau.net> <mailto:craig at tereschau.net <mailto:craig at tereschau.net>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Hi Dave:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> You asked about museums and their commitment to archiving.  As someone who was trained as a historian and still does occasional archival work for fun, I'll hazard a somewhat structural answer and then John D. can comment on computing museums.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> One can assess archives on at least three dimensions:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> * Commitment to ensuring their collections are preserved for centuries to come.  This requires money (for fire suppression and temperature monitoring and the like) and also requires careful evaluation and planning (preserving paper for instance, is different from preserving paintings, which is different from preserving fabrics).
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> * Commitment to creating finding aids (catalogs, indexes, collection descriptions) that enable researchers to find items in the collections.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> * Commitment to making their collections available for research (or public display).
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The last may surprise folks but there are a number of institutions that have strong views about who should and should not be able to use their collections, usually to the detriment of scholarship and the public interest.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> (And, if you want an example of exactly how not to do all three, consider the team of scholars who were originally given control of the Dead Sea Scrolls).
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Craig
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>>> *****
>>>>>>> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and mailing lists.
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>> End of Internet-history Digest, Vol 20, Issue 4
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