Re: E-Biomed: Very important NIH Proposal

From: Arthur Smith <apsmith_at_APS.ORG>
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 15:16:12 -0400

On Wed, 12 May 1999 03:33:48 -0400, D. R. Forsdyke <forsdyke_at_post.queensu.ca> wrote:

> The only problem is that there is talk of only ONE archival site.
>Like the Library of Alexandria, there is great vulnerability here. A
>bomb, or some other malfeasance, and ALL would be lost. There is also
>the problem of some insider tinkering with the record. We need to have
> >2 sites at different locations on the planet, and under different supervision

Yes, this is an important issue. At least xxx has mirrors, though
most of the subject areas do not have different supervision in the
sense of any kind of official structure with clear archival commitments
and responsibility.

Having talked with David Lipman earlier about the NAS/NLM "pubref" project,
duplicates and mirroring was an issue I thought important there, and if I
recall correctly they'd put a bit of thought into it, but I don't think it's been
any kind of high priority. But I believe they have a reasonably secure
backup system for what they currently do - at the very least the Medline data
are distributed all over the world.

Of course we don't have a whole lot of redundancy here either, though
some money is supposed to be spent in the next year or so to greatly
improve it. An important issue, and not adequately addressed by anybody
right now...

  Arthur (apsmith_at_aps.org)
Received on Wed Feb 10 1999 - 19:17:43 GMT