I agree that you can’t always wait for procedures. I remember when the state Library I used to work for got its first cd-rom. I couldn’t wait to put it out in the reading room and see how it went. But no, first 2 pages of procedures had to be nutted out and written: users would have to book an hour time slot etc etc – before any of us had any idea of who might use it or how.

My concern is not only with the long term – will this be around in 50 years time – but also with will it be searchable. Who will know where this stuff is and how easy will it be to search? For example it would be very nice if all publicly released federal government documents were sent, electronically, to the National Library, who would catalogue them, with a link to the document stored on their server. And state governments could do the same with with their documents and state libraries. Simple, but it doesn’t happen.

But my point is that it is quite unlikely that anything will actually disappear, and I also thoroughly agree with Nicholas that it is far better to take this risk than it is to just not do anything until we have fully understood the ramifications and rammed said ramifications through 1500 pages of policys and approvals.

But as for supposing that the server farms will get ever bigger, well, yes, this does seem an extremely safe thing to suppose (in terms of storage capacity at least!).

It shouldn’t be hard to capture the electronic musings of politicians and government departments, but do our institutions have the resources and sense to do it? (They’re not doing brilliantly with paper!)

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

It’s like this … in a couple of years time some MP is going to go into the parliamentary library and say “Plibersek said xxxxx about xxxx a while ago, can you find that?” And the librarian will check Hansard, no; media releases, no; newspaper articles, no; transcripts of radio and tv interviews, no & no.

Because she tweeted it, but now it’s gone into the ether, can’t be found, and she can never be held account for it. For a celebrity, who cares, but for the public pronouncement of a government minister, not good enough.