Internet Archive seeks to preserve online data

The now-defunct Information and Communication Ministry (1994-2008), which had led Korea’s IT industry, no longer exists on the Internet. That is, no search engine can access its website. All contents on its website at Cyworld, a popular Korean social network service, have also disappeared.

The Korea Communications Commission, launched in February 2008, had the ministry’s online contents deleted. “The functions of the ministry have been transferred to the Korea Communications Commission, the Knowledge Economy Ministry, the Public Administration and Security Ministry and the Culture, Sports and Tourism Ministry,” the commission said. Based on this explanation, all contents should be available at the branches of the government.

In reality, however, there is no way for the public to find what kind of or which information the Information Ministry had because all contents on the Internet disappeared. Unfortunately, Korea is neglecting the conservation of online information.

○ Conservation of online information unavailable elsewhere

“The same data are preserved in three different places, here, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and at the Alexandria Library in Egypt. We don’t think this is enough. We plan to increase the archives to six places,” said Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, at his office in San Francisco on June 30.

In an interview with The Dong-A Ilbo, he further explained the purpose of the Internet Archive in that he “began this work to hand down original knowledge to the next generation.”

The archive is an online database founded in San Francisco in 1996 and a non-profit organization that saves so-called digital-only information, or data existing only on the Internet and unavailable in other forms of media such as books, newspapers or films.

He also founded Alexa.com, the world’s biggest Internet ranking website, and the WAIS system, the Internet’s first search system and a precursor to the World Wide Web. Selling WAIS to AOL and Alexa.com to Amazon.com made him one of the world’s richest men. Having public interest in mind, he used the money to establish the Internet Archive.

The archive so far has saved the contents of around 2.7 billion websites donated by thousands of public institutes, universities and libraries in 14 countries. It also converts paper books and newspapers, films and music into digital data and saves them in case these physical materials might be damaged with the passing of time.

The archive began saving the source paper books in containers in case such digital data might be damaged. Such books are either purchased or donated. The Internet Archive has thus become the “Ark of Knowledge” just like Noah`s Ark.

○ Global efforts to preserve Internet data

When the Internet Archive’s achievements received attention in the U.S., Washington decided to join the effort. In 2000, the Library of Congress began gathering information available only online on certain topics such as the U.S. presidential election or Iraq war and to save them separately.

Led by the National Library of France in 2003, the International Internet Preservation Consortium was established by national libraries around the world. Members of the consortium are 42 national libraries, including those of many European countries.

The National Library of Korea became a member of the consortium in 2008. Its online digital data, however, is too little to match the national library’s status. Oasis.go.kr was launched by the library to preserve online digital data, but the number of data collected last year was only 133,834, lower than 151,087 in 2010.

According to the U.S. website monitoring company Pingdom, more than 300 million websites were opened worldwide last year.

sanhkim@donga.com