A Cash Infusion For Digital Archives
from the will-it-work? dept
I’m actually a bit surprised, with all the other areas the government is cutting support for, that they’ve pledged $100 million to the Library of Congress to help them create a digital archive (NY Times article…). Of course, there are a few caveats. $75 million of that money is contingent on them finding a matching $75 million (in cash, hardware, software, or consulting services) from private donors (though, that leaves for quite a bit of flexibility – a software company could easily donate “$75 million worth” of software without it costing them a dime). There are plenty of questions as to how the Library will go about creating a digital archive, and part of me wonders why they don’t just team up with Brewster Kahle and the folks over at the Internet Archive – as they’ve been putting a lot of thought into these issues.
