Web-sites unlike books disappear once the owner stops paying for the website. This is a potentially huge loss of knowledge and existing global archives are very limited in securing such knowledge - often being incomplete and difficult to access.
Following years of thought on how best to conserve on-line resources and unable to find a single organisation that could handle the job I finally decided to set it up myself.
http://glass-study.org/ It is fully registered under French law as a 'not for profit association/company' with the full legal documentation published on the site along with an informal English translation. Officers and members of the Association are not able to derive any income from it.
The basic task of the Association being to ensure that when an owner is no longer able, or chooses not to, to support his/her own website that it can be freely parked, permanently and publicly, with the Glass Study Association who will ensure it remains freely available on the web for posterity.
The only inclusion for criteria is that the site covers the subject of glass. Commercial glass sites would be preserved if they also include reference resources but trading or charges for access would not be allowed.
Sites will not be altered other than to adapt them technically when necessary to a form that can be perpetuated with the authors original text and images. In general we need the consent and assistance of the sites author to establish the site in its new home.
We are also willing to allow the authors to continue to update their sites if they wish under Glass Study Association stewardship. Any sales of intellectual property rights would be passed to the author or their estate in a manner agreed at transfer, the copyright remains with the originators not the Association.
We hope that GMB'ers will applaud this initiative and help to spread the word to glass site owners everywhere. We are not in a hurry to take sites on as we first have to establish a committee that is sufficient to ensure the permanent existence of the association. But would welcome the non-binding pledges of owners of web-sites to help show an interest in the concept. We also welcome applications to be involved with the Association. We will need some technical people, translators, PR help as well as management. Discussions have commenced with particular organisations world-wide.
If you have copies of web-sites that have already disappeared we would be pleased to hear from you.
Banners are available on the website to help spread the word.
n.b. Not to be confused with the entirely separate glass-study.com
Topic: Glass-Study Association - Archive for Glass web-sites and digital resources (Read 3896 times)
