a preservation experience

[Office of The Provost <provost@georgetown.edu>]

It might not be irrelevant to this list's consideration of issues
surrounding digital resources and their preservation to hear a little
story of discovery.

A colleague had 'published' an article in the proceedings of an
international conference about three years ago.  The proceedings were only
published on-line, and she had linked from her own home page to the
official version.  On looking for that article a couple of days ago (to
verify some quotations and figures), she discovered that the original
publisher had either moved or deleted the original file.  A moderately
thorough search of the site showed that it was advertising *next* year's
conference in the same series, but the publication itself was gone.  A
Google search was no help.

Consulted on this, I wondered what would happen if . . .  So I went to the
Internet Archive site (www.archive.org) and used their "Wayback Machine":  
type in the URL of the desired resource and see what happens.  In a few
seconds (good DSL), I had the list.  Hits are listed by Wayback by date of
archiving sweep -- thus, if the same file was modified over time, captures
at different dates will capture different versions.  There were 6 hits for
the year 2001 and 1 for February 2002, none since (suggesting when the
original was lost).  The first hit proved a null set -- file not found.  
The second through seventh were all gold:  the original file in its
original 'published' form, complete with all graphics and links.

I was gobsmacked!  It left me feeling as I do when I try some improbable
keystroke combination deep in the bowels of Microsoft Word, and something
I thought impossible suddenly happens.  I feel equally sure that the
achievement might be hard to reproduce.  (Naturally we made a copy to hold
onto.)

Does this model suggest the value of a comprehensive Internet archive?
Does it exemplify the "Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe" principle?  Or was
it gross dumb luck?  I leave these questions to others to discuss.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown University