Why Preserve Books? The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, announced on the IA blog on Monday that they’ve been working on keeping a physical archive of the books they digitize.
Internet Archive is building a physical archive for the long term preservation of one copy of every book, record, and movie we are able to attract or acquire. Because we expect day-to-day access to these materials to occur through digital means, the our physical archive is designed for long-term preservation of materials with only occasional, collection-scale retrieval. Because of this, we can create optimized environments for physical preservation and organizational structures that facilitate appropriate access. A seed bank might be conceptually closest to what we have in mind: storing important objects in safe ways to be used for redundancy, authority, and in case of catastrophe.
The goal is to preserve one copy of every published work. The universe of unique titles has been estimated at close to one hundred million items. Many of these are rare or unique, so we do not expect most of these to come to the Internet Archive; they will instead remain in their current libraries. But the opportunity to preserve over ten million items is possible, so we have designed a system that will expand to this level. Ten million books is approximately the size of a world-class university library or public library, so we see this as a worthwhile goal. If we are successful, then this set of cultural materials will last for centuries and could be beneficial in ways that we cannot predict.
The goal is strictly archival, so their storage solution is cardboard boxes in shipping containers. They have pictures!
Based on this success and the increasing availability of physical materials, a production facility leveraging this design will be launched in June of 2011 in Richmond, California. The essence of the design from the book’s point of view is to have several layers of protection, each able to be monitored and periodically inspected:
- Books are cataloged, and have acid free paper inserts with information about the book and its location,
- Boxes store approximately 40 books with labeling on the outside,
- Pallets hold 24 boxes each,
- Modified 40′ shipping containers are used as secure and individually controllable environments of 50 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 30% relative humidity,
- Buildings contain shipping containers and environmental systems,
- Non-profit organizations own and protect the property and its contents.