Project aims to preserve web information for posterity

The average lifespan of a web page is approximately 44 days, according to the American Library Association.

So what happens to important digital information that is not available in any other form when sites expire? Cathy Hartman, head of the digital projects department in the UNT Libraries, and Samantha Hastings, interim dean of the School of Library and Information Sciences, received a $433,000 grant from the U.S. Library of Congress to come up with an answer.

The project is part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, a Library of Congress initiative to create an infrastructure to capture and preserve information born digitally with no printed versions. UNT's funding is part of a $14.9 million grant given to a network of institutions to develop library tools and procedures for archiving web pages.

UNT is creating archiving tools and procedures that librarians can use to capture and preserve collections of web-based government and political information. The California Digital Library and New York University will work with UNT for three years on this project.

The UNT project focuses on preserving for future researchers and historians the web sites of federal agencies and commissions that have ceased operation.

The project also determines which of the web pages born each day on the Internet merit being preserved for posterity.

BY RUFUS COLEMAN rcoleman@unt.edu

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