About Me

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Web person at the Imperial War Museum, just completed PhD about digital sustainability in museums (the original motivation for this blog was as my research diary). Posting occasionally, and usually museum tech stuff but prone to stray. I welcome comments if you want to take anything further. These are my opinions and should not be attributed to my employer or anyone else (unless they thought of them too). Twitter: @jottevanger

Monday, July 09, 2007

Perpetuity, huh? Remind me, how long is that?

Another thing I meant to write about an awfully long time ago: http://ahds.ac.uk/news/futureAHDS.htm
The death of the AHDS (but not, it appears, the ADS for now) is not just a blow for the service itself and its users, but for the very idea of data repositories funded by UK Research Councils are trustworthy. Data preservation is for the long term and a broken thread may as well never have existed. With the AHRC (declaration of interest: they fund my PhD) pulling the rug from beneath the AHDS, and JISC being obliged to follow, who is going to want to hand their data to another such data service? I don't think it needs me to say much, there are better informed people out there who have plenty to say.