Preserving Science

I’ve been publishing articles since the last century.

In fact, my first, legitimate publication was a letter to science journal Nature with my then thesis supervisor (Keith Aldridge) in 1987 … that’s 31 years ago . Armed with nothing more than Google Scholar, searching for “aldridge lumb nature 1987” yields access to the article via Nature’s website in fractions of a second. Moreover, since the introduction of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) around the turn of the last century (circa 2000), articles such as this one are uniquely identifiable and findable via a URL – e.g., the URL for our Nature letter is http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/325421a0.

In this letter to Nature, Keith and I cite an 1880 publication authored by Lord Kelvin – whom, it appears, is known for fluid dynamics in addition to the temperature scale that bears his name … and, of course, much more! Through this and other citations, Keith and I explicitly acknowledged how the contributions of others enabled us to produce our letter – in other words, we made it clear how we have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants.

In addition to assigning intellectual credit where it is due, this personal reflection underscores the importance of preserving contributions over the long haul – make that 138 years in the case of Kelvin’s 1880 paper. Preservation is a well-established practice in the case of scientific journals, for example, even though it may be necessary to draw upon analog renditions captured via print or microfiche rather than some digital representation.

In self-curating portfolios recently, it’s been made increasingly clear to me that content preservation has not been a focal point in the digital realm.

Digital Properties

Let’s make use of Grid Computing for the purpose of providing an illustrative example. In its heyday, a popular and reputable online magazine was GRIDtoday: “DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY”. Other than a passing reference in pioneering publisher Tom Tabor’s BIO (you can search for his BIO here), I expect you’ll be hard pressed to locate very much at all regarding this once-thriving online property. Like Grid Computing itself: GRIDtoday, gone tomorrow; RIP GRIDtoday. Of course, Grid Computing Planet (GCP) suffered a similar fate.

My purpose here is not to question those extremely reasonable business decisions that resulted in closing down operations on GCP or GRIDtoday – Tabor Communications, for example, boasts three, prized ‘properties’ as of this writing … one of which (HPCwire) predates the inception of GRIDtoday, and remains a go-to source for all things HPC.

Grid Computing remains an important chapter in my professional life – especially given my claims for genetic imprinting via Distributed Computing. However, based upon my desire to assemble a portfolio of my work that includes Grid Computing, the /dev/null redirection of those bits that collectively represented GRIDtoday and GCP is problematical. In particular, and even though I collaborated upon articles and book chapters that have been preserved in analog and/or digital representations, articles contributed to GRIDtoday and GCP still retain value to me personally – value that I’d like to incorporate into my Portfolio.

Enter The Internet Archive

Fortunately, also since close to the end of the last century, The Internet Archive has been:

… building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, [they] provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.

I’m not intending to imply that those items I was able to have published via GRIDtoday and GCP carry ‘a Kelvin of clout’ however, for more than purely sentimental reasons it’s truly wonderful that The Internet Archive has attempted to preserve those artifacts that collectively comprised these publications in their heyday. Although I haven’t yet attempted to locate an article I wrote for GCP, I was able to retrieve two articles from the archive for GRIDtoday:

• Towards The Telecosmic Grid – Published originally in December 2002, in this article I ‘channeled’ George Gilder is asserting that: “Isolating and manipulating discrete wavelengths of visible light across intelligent optical transport media results in the grid – a specific instance of The Telecosmic Grid. Several examples serve as beacons of possibility.” More on this soon (I hope) in a separate post that revisits this possibility.
• Open Grid Forum: Necessary … but Sufficient? – Published originally in June 2006, this may be the most-opinionated article I’ve ever had appear in any media format! It generated a decent amount of traffic for GRIDtoday, as well as an interesting accusation – an accusation ‘leaked’, incidentally, through a mailing list archive.

Given that these two GRIDtoday articles are currently accessible via The Internet Archive means that I can include each of them directly in my Portfolio, and update my blog posts that make reference to them. Having laid intellectual claim (in 2002 I’ll have you know!!! 😉 to various possibilities telecosmic in nature, I’ll be able to soon revisit the same through the guise of hindsight. Whereas I fully appreciate that business decisions need to be made, and as consequence once-popular landing pages necessarily disappear, it’s truly fortunate that The Internet Archive has our collective backs on this. So, if this post has any key takeaways, it’s simply this:

Please donate to The Internet Archive.

Thanks Brewster!