Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Physical Archive of the Internet Archive


If my memory serves me correctly, I recall a proposal that was floated, unsuccessfully, sometime during the late 1980s/early 1990s (??), designating the Reference and Loan Library as a depository for "last-copy" adult fiction. (Received from Wisconsin libraries only.)

It was an idea that took hold in Montana.

New Hampshire State Library last copy repository for adult fiction.   (From 2001.  No longer in operation?)

There is also a reference to a Last Copy Fiction Cooperative in the South Carolina State Library Collection Development Policy.  From the 1/21/2011 minutes of the South Carolina Public Library Administrators meetings:  The State Library has plans to close the Last Copy Fiction Collection – contact David if you have any concerns.


In a Flood Tide of Digital Data, an Ark Full of Books. (The New York Times, 3/4/2012)

Excerpt: In a wooden warehouse in this industrial suburb, the 20th century is being stored in case of digital disaster. 

Forty-foot shipping containers stacked two by two are stuffed with the most enduring, as well as some of the most forgettable, books of the era. Every week, 20,000 new volumes arrive, many of them donations from libraries and universities thrilled to unload material that has no place in the Internet Age. 

Destined for immortality one day last week were “American Indian Policy in the 20th Century,” “All New Crafts for Halloween,” “The Portable Faulkner,” “What to Do When Your Son or Daughter Divorces” and “Temptation’s Kiss,” a romance. 

“We want to collect one copy of every book,” said Brewster Kahle, who has spent $3 million to buy and operate this repository situated just north of San Francisco. “You can never tell what is going to paint the portrait of a culture.”  [Emphasis added.]




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