[HN Gopher] The Internet Archive takes over foreign dissertation...
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       The Internet Archive takes over foreign dissertations from Leiden
       University
        
       Author : gpvos
       Score  : 95 points
       Date   : 2024-10-09 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.library.universiteitleiden.nl)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.library.universiteitleiden.nl)
        
       | varenc wrote:
       | > "...it decided to deselect these dissertations, so that _3.2
       | km_ could be freed up for new acquisitions"
       | 
       | Am I reading this correctly and they have 3.2 kilometers of
       | dissertations? What an interesting unit of paper archive size,
       | though it makes sense.
        
         | StrangeDoctor wrote:
         | I think linear bookshelf distance is a normal unit for talking
         | about collections. At least as informative as number of books.
         | Guessing 15 meters per bookshelf from photos, 214 bookshelves?
         | doesn't sound as cool to me.
        
         | Jtsummers wrote:
         | 3.2km of linear storage space makes sense for books. You aren't
         | just piling them up in stacks, where volume might be a useful
         | measure, and you aren't putting them arbitrarily deep on the
         | same row because that prevents access. You'll usually store
         | things like this one book deep. If you have a 4-row shelf where
         | you could have an 8-row shelf with the same width, each row 1m
         | wide, you have 4m vs 8m of linear storage space.
        
         | Ekaros wrote:
         | About 3 200 000 cm... That is actually surprisingly large
         | number if you assign any number of centimetres for each.
        
           | netrus wrote:
           | You are of by a factor of 10.
        
             | bedatadriven wrote:
             | You are off by one f.
        
       | MichaelZuo wrote:
       | The interesting question is why they aren't expanding their
       | archival storage space. What's higher priority for any university
       | archives than keeping dissertations?
        
         | eesmith wrote:
         | These are dissertations from other universities, where the
         | originating university still has a copy.
         | 
         | > The dissertations were originally part of an exchange
         | programme between (mostly European) universities until the year
         | 2004 but were never catalogued on arrival. ... The universities
         | where these dissertations originally were defended informed UBL
         | that they still have the dissertations and were not interested
         | in receiving back the Leiden copy.
        
           | hyperbrainer wrote:
           | Wonder when the day will arrive when universities decide to
           | offload all archives to online media only, just keeping the
           | most important books and maybe unique manuscripts in
           | libraries.
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | Presumably most of the dissertations produced at reputable
           | universities would be valuable enough to keep at least 2
           | copies in storage.
        
       | sharpshadow wrote:
       | There needs to be a global effort to backup the Internet Archive
       | at this point.
        
         | esskay wrote:
         | Just need to find someone with ~220pb of storage and the
         | ability to increase that by approximately 50% annually forever
         | more.
        
       | ratedgene wrote:
       | I believe there was pressure on IA so that bigger corporate
       | players of data hoarding could monopolize access.
        
       | jampekka wrote:
       | Tangential: Archive.org is giving alert popup "Have you ever felt
       | like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the
       | verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just
       | happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!"
        
         | consumer451 wrote:
         | Wow, I'm seeing that as well.
         | 
         | Earlier today, I was seeing reports on Bluesky that it was down
         | for a lot of people.
        
           | stebalien wrote:
           | Possible supply-chain "attack" (or demonstration, from what I
           | can tell) on wherever they get their polyfill library? It's
           | coming from:
           | 
           | https://polyfill.archive.org/v3/polyfill.min.js?features=fet.
           | ..
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | When IPO?
        
       | fngjdflmdflg wrote:
       | I wonder if this is a large enough catalog for IA to fly out to
       | the Netherlands to ship these in as they do with entire
       | libraries:
       | 
       | >We will be very accepting of materials that you will pack, ship
       | and de-dupe, and we are more selective when we have to pay and
       | coordinate. But we can do this and we have done so for many many
       | collections of items we do not have. For full libraries our Away
       | Team will travel to your location to pack and ship.[0]
       | 
       | See also "Preserving the legacy of a library when a college
       | closes."[1]
       | 
       | [0] https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-
       | donat...
       | 
       | [1] https://blog.archive.org/2019/12/10/preserving-the-legacy-
       | of...
        
       | Fraterkes wrote:
       | off topic, b
        
       | n3uman wrote:
       | https://blog.archive.org/2021/02/04/thank-you-ubuntu-and-lin...
       | They openly show a possible vector. "The Internet Archive is
       | wholly dependent on Ubuntu and the Linux communities that create
       | a reliable, free (as in beer), free (as in speech), rapidly
       | evolving operating system. It is hard to overestimate how
       | important that is to creating services such as the Internet
       | Archive." Maybe CUPS?
        
         | asynchronous wrote:
         | I mean that gives nothing away, if someone compromised Ubuntu
         | the OS they have a lot more targets than IA here.
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-09 23:00 UTC)