Preservation of electronic information

    **** Moderator's comments:   Please reply directly to the
    author.

I am doing some research on the long-term dependability of access to
electronic text and other types of electronic information and
resources.  As part of this study, I would greatly appreciate it if
the subscribers to this discussion would give some attention to the
following questions and return their answers to me.  You need not
identify yourself or your institution, but you may if you would
like. You may answer any, all or none of the questions below (or
volunteer any other information).

I am greatly concerned with the dependability of access to
electronic information--particularly of the Internet variety.  The
results of my queries will become part of a more or less
impressionistic report on the subject to be shared at the annual
conference of the AAASS this fall.

There is practically no literature available on this subject, and
any replies will be *very* valuable to me and greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance, and please reply directly to me rather than the
group.

    1.  What type of institution are you, or are you an individual?

    2.  Do you or does your institution mount files which are
        accessible through a network?

    3.  Are these files produced by you or your institution or do
        they originate elsewhere (i.e. archived journals)?

    4.  Do you depend on renewable funding to maintain these files?

    5.  What would you do with the files if the funding were no
        longer available?

    6.  How do you maintain access to files if they need to be moved
        to a different location?

    7.  Do you keep tape or other type of backups of your files?

    8.  Does your institution have a written policy regarding
        preservation of access to these files in some form or other?

    9.  Do you maintain a Web site?

    10. What types of information do you provide there?

    11. What types of services/information do you provide links to?

    12. If and when sites to which you point move or disappear, do
        you record this information for users of your site?

    13. If you could no longer maintain your Web site, what would
        you do?

    14. Do you or does your institution engage in publication of
        electronic journals or other type of periodical?

    15. How are they made available?

    16. Is there a written policy regarding continued access to your
        publication across the network?

    17. Do you maintain backups of your publication on tape?  disk?
        print?

    18. Do you archive back copies of your publications or make them
        available electronically in some way?

    19. Do you provide access to electronic resources from an online
        catalogue?

    20. Are these resources catalogued and classified (do they have
        a call number)?

Also, in order to acquire some context for my study, I would like to
find out which resources users use the most or depend on the most. I
am interested in which *types* of resources you use the most
(listservs, e-mail, electronic journals, online databases, etc.) as
well as any specific resources that you consider to be the most
useful or important.  If you are a librarian, I would be interested
in how various patrons (faculty, grads, undergrads, general public,
grade schoolers) use the electronic resources, particularly
networked resources, that you provide.

Please add anything else that you feel is important or might be
pertinent to the discussion.

Scott Gillies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Graduate School of Library and Information Science

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 9:16
                  Distributed: Monday, August 14, 1995
                        Message Id: cdl-9-16-014
                                  ***