Hopefully all the talk of ‘records management’ which is beginning to happen in local government (and quite rightly so) extend to the internet. I’ve just spent 20 minutes or so trying to find a presentation that has a good quote in it…only the original website where this was held seems to have er…been removed without leaving an archive behind.

Thankfully there’s the ‘way back when’ machine at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php . But is this the best way to archive the internet???

There must be at least one ODPM funded project struggling to get out to do this properly. Do any local authorities have a policy for archiving their internet? Does such a policy exist at a national level? If it doesn’t it would be good if it did because if trying to research something that only happened a couple of years ago proves impossible, what are future generations going to be able to find?

Some of those responsible for this muddle are such big targets it almosts seems unfair to throw criticisms at them - unfortunately it is necessary to have to do this.

Just seems to be yet another example of how we hear a great deal of ‘talk the talk’ but we don’t get so much ‘walk the walk’.