“We just launched a 16TB archive of every dataset that has been available on data.gov since November. This will be updated day by day as new datasets appear. It can be freely copied, and we're sharing the code behind it to help others make their own archives of data they depend on.” Harvard Library Innovation Lab (via BlueSky)
Incredible essay about the importance and challenges of digital archival by Maxwell Neely-Cohen, as well as the various imperfect strategies to achieve “century-scale” digital archives.
We picked a century scale because most physical objects can survive 100 years in good care. It is attainable, and yet we selected it because the design of mainstream digital storage mediums are nowhere close to even considering this mark.
The current web pages and marketing for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud do not mention cultural or historical preservation at any point. ... At this precise moment all of these services mention AI (a lot) and how it’s going to change everything. ... Two years ago their marketing materials mentioned web3 and the metaverse (a lot) and how it was going to change everything, and how if your business did not adapt you were going to be left behind—yet those sentiments no longer appear.
Today’s archive spelunking led me down a rabbit hole trying to learn more about the “Gay Revolution Networker” mentioned in this poster from 1971 (full size). The “Gay is Angry” poster is from the Library of Congress’s Yanker Poster Collection, but the LOC provides no further information on the GRN.
Some research by Langdon Manor Books into a flyer in their catalog suggests that the Gay Revolution Networker was a New York City-based gay collective, which held meetings at locations including the Washington Square Church and the Come!Unity Press, a gay anarchist collective and print shop in New York City that I want to learn more about.
This flyer — itself a fascinating piece, described by Langdon as “a gorgeous enigma” — advertises a meeting for the GRN, but also includes on the opposite side an essay by a person named Velvet, which denounces the Gay Activist’s Alliance as sexist and complacent, and notes “the part about sexism goes for GRN too”.
