At this moment many electronic publications can be frustrating to access. Sites may be poorly designed (e.g., over-sized graphics or files that are too big to download) or an individual's access may be restricted due to narrow bandwidth or limited access.
To improve accessibility and enhance archive insurance, publishers2 should make use of mirror sites. Reliable mirror sites are like medieval monasteries where monks held the surviving copies of important documents. Such world-wide mirror sites will help ensure that documents remain available and accessible. Multiple sites also help make those same documents more easily accessible as the Internet pipelines linking countries and continents do not always run at optimal power. A good scenario comprises of mirror sites on each continent; a better one, mirror sites in multiple countries; and, the best, multiple sites in individual countries at many different institutions. Users around the world would be able to log onto the nearest site ensuring optimal access.
The optimal location for a mirror site within an institution should be at a library or a museum. It is possible for an educational institution to close a geoscience department, but a library is usually part of the infrastructure of a university or college and likely to remain intact. This same relationship hold true for a museum. As has been the case historically, publishers remain in the business of preparing and producing documents, while librarians and museum curators continue to work as the archivists of our civilization.
Statistics come and go on the Internet, but an alarming number of web pages appear and just as quickly disappear. Although unsustantiated reports regularly appear in e-mail communications that the average web page lasts 24 hours or less than a week. The fate of one mirror site is illustrated in this poignant e-mail: "Unfortunately ... our site is now gone forever as we have an unreliable electricity supply to the server and it's not worth sorting out ..." (Riedel 1999).
The Library as Archive. Throughout history, the structures that maintain the continuity of civilizations have been attacked and often destroyed. In many instances, though documents from those times and before did survive, often because copies were stored in out-of- the-way archives.
Although not as devastating as a period of social unrest, another attack on libraries came about due to the use of acidic paper, mostly since the end of WWII. At the University of Toronto library it is estimated that 6 million books are in jeopardy from this threat (Patterson 1998). Electronic publications face a similar threat. Unlike a printed volume, which required a wide distribution and acid-free paper to secure its lifespan, electronic publications are affected by:
Document survival is a key goal for all publications, including those of electronic format, and not surprisingly, it is librarians who are stepping into the breach to ensure this. Libraries, known as "super libraries", are making the commitment to keep documents on-line by keeping older systems functional, and by migrating documents from outdated formats to accessible formats. In 1998 Texas A&M University added an entire wing devoted to electronic publications.
Long-term Accessibility. The Association of Research Libraries has formed the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). This group is encouraging the formation of electronic clearing houses, which could make documents available to a wide audience at a reasonable cost (Machen 1998). This concept bypasses traditional methods of scholarly information dissemination, and is clearly a response to the fact that library site licenses for WWW versions of journals can cost as much as 25% more than paper versions. The SPARC is also collaborating with the American Chemical Society to produce an organic chemistry journal, one of the first efforts by libraries to compete with traditional scholarly publishing.
The WWW allows authors and publishers to think of new ways to develop publications. In the past, a document was defined by it's publication date. Although other books could be published, once off the press, a traditional book is complete. This is no longer the case. For instance, the ODP is an internationally funded program that exists within a definitive time period, but the shelf-life of the prime data generated by the program should be indefinite. Papers based on ODP-research will continue to appear for many years after the end of the program. If the archive of information is gifted to an institution willing to support the migration of material to accessible platforms and to support the review process for submitted papers, publications could continue indefinitely, expanding further and further the breadth of the ODP collection.