I've been thinking about this issue for a while (although I tend to have a long scope, e.g. looking forward to a time when everyone currently on this list is dead; so I think things like 'failed states' need to be a concern too), and I think history has a key lesson for us. I've been reading up on the history of the Greek cities after the Pelponnesian War, down through the War of the Successors (the Diadochi) after Alexander the Great died. One book I read said that the only surviving source for many major periods in this stretch was Diodorus (a Greek historian from Syracuse in the first century BC); he wrote a history of the world in 40 volumes, only 15 of which survive today complete. The sad thing is that there _was_ a complete set in the library at Constantinope, as late as 1453 (and we know what happened then). So it survived the best part of 2K years, and was then lost; the parts that _did_ survive, did so because there were copies in other libraries. So the lesson is clear: we need to _replicate_ stuff, in a geographically and nationally distributed way. The mirroring of Bitsavers is _very_ good news. However, even in the class of stuff that it focuses on, e.g. old manufacturer documentation, some things don't make it in there, but do exist in other online repositories (e.g. Manx's collections). So one thing we need to do is come up with something like Bitsavers, but with more curatorial work-sharing. Al has done an _incredible_ job, for which we are all deeply in his debt - but it would be good to come up with some way to help him. (E.g. I've been adding links to online versions of manuals, in articles on older DEC stuff I'm doing the CHWiki, and I often find things which aren't in Bitsavers. But sending Al an email saying 'hey, xxx is {here}, you might want to upload it' is just putting all the load on him.) Getting all this stuff into the replicated, mirrored system is a key priority. Multiple independent copies will of course help with this (very real) problem. The mirrors will likely be using different hardware, and will turn it over at different times. We could definitely use more mirrors, though - and geographically distributed: it looks like there are current (non-US) ones in the UK, and in Germany - more would be good. New Zealand? Australia? Maybe Japan and India? Individual volunteers aren't really what we need ('when everyone currently on this list is dead'); it needs to be institutions. Jerry Saltzer thought about this, especially the 'generations of hardware', and 'software formats' (e.g old Word docuents) issues. See: "Technology, Networks, and the Library of the Year 2000" http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/inria/inria.pdf (particularly Section 4.3 "Persistence"), and also: "Fault-Tolerance in Very Large Archival Systems" http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/fault-tol/fault-tolerance.pdf Yes. Don't just use a link, copy stuff down to a place _you_ control. (I.e. not Google Drive. Nothing against Google, but their business might go somewhere different, like Geocities, etc.) I have a large collection of down-loaded stuff. Already I've run into cases where stuff has gone offline, and without my local copy... Noel