See also: notes on the event

• ❑ Access and Preservation panel
  • ❑ Opening Statement
    • ❑ W3C's mission is to keep the web from fragmenting a la VHS vs Betamax
      • ❑ W3C has about 400 member organizations
        • ❑ some of them in this room: Google, Microsoft
        • ❑ others: Creative Commons, Boeing, Mozilla foundation
      • ❑ I'm one of about 70 staff at 3 hosts.
        • ❑ MIT in the Americas
        • ❑ ERCIM in France
        • ❑ Keio University in Japan
      • ❑ Tim Berners-Lee is the Director and the only current staff member who has been there longer than I have.
      • ❑ We have about 30 working groups, from HTML to XML to Web Accessibility to Internationalization Guidelines to the Semantic Web, to Web Architcture
    • ❑ Much of my work is done over the network, but a big part of my job is getting people together in the same room to build trust, and maintain relationships.
      • ❑ What my job has in common with yours: I'm trying to make W3C a place where interesting people want to come and contribute. We're all recruiting and competing for attention and loyalty.
      • ❑ What did timbl do? Invent technology? What's novel is that he shared it and he works every day to keep it open.
      • ❑ What web publishing shares with traditional publishing: yes, it's cheaper to distribute the text, but it's just as expensive to get attention, loyalty, and endorsement; to build an audience and a reputable editorial board.
        • ❑ And with so many more texts available, it's more expensive to decide which texts to read.
    • ❑ Principle #1 of Web Architecture is: use URIs.
      • ❑ While some links in the web do break, following links in the web is about 96% reliable. Library efforts should not run from the existing HTTP and DNS URLs because of the 4%, but apply your expertise in access and preservation to increase the reliability of following links in scholarly communication.
      • ❑ Douglas Englebart was and is a visionary in digital collaborate work; in his 1990 paper on requirements for computer supported collaborative work, he wrote:
        • ❑ The Hyperdocument "Library System" - where hyperdocuments can be submitted to a library-like service that catalogs them and guarantees access when referenced by its catalog number, or "jumped to" with an appropriate link. Links within newly submitted hyperdocuments can cite any passages within any of the prior documents, and the back-link service lets the online reader of a document detect and "go examine" any passage of a subsequent document that has a link citing that passage.
        • ❑ recent release of his work in HTML/javascript
      • ❑ W3C has a strong culture/tradition of persistence. Most of our 10-year old URIs still work. We take broken links seriously. Our policy begins:
        • ❑ "When information is made available on the Web, it is important for the integrity of the Web, and the society based upon it, that the URIs used to reference information be used well into the future, and that the information persist as identified."
        • ❑ We're working with MIT libraries etc. to back this persistence policy with long-term institutional commitment
        • ❑ Think about domain names
          • ❑ newproject.org or newproject.utexas.edu?
          • ❑ www.utexas.edu/dr_doe/file23.html
          • ❑ You can create a virtual organization in no time, but there is no shortcut to getting its value understood and appreciated.
            • ❑ Friday night football games are a big part of building loyalty to an institution. How does the meta university do that?
            • ❑ Anyone can distribute a new technical specification on the Web. What brings them to W3C is our reputation for our review process and our established culture and policies.
            • ❑ Think about scaling down as well as scaling up. Movie recommendations from yahoo.com are not augmenting, not replacing recommendations from friends and family.
        • ❑ A shift from publishers recovering costs from consumers to endowed publication looks very promising; please invest in it.
          • ❑ I have a son in 6th grade; his science textbook is on the web, but behind a password. How long until Open Courseware and the like remove that barrier? It's hard to compete with free; can we shift from cost-recovery via consumers to endowed publication?
  • ❑ Other points as time permits
    • ❑ Movie studios aggregate risk for big-budget films. Libraries have a similar role.
    • ❑ Some things only change as generations pass. Universities have a new generation every 4 years (every year, or 6 years...)