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FW: Great Minds to Discuss '10,000-year Library'



originally posted on technology list.

t

-----Original Message-----
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi [mailto:tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de]
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 7:44 AM
To: technology@lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Great Minds to Discuss '10,000-year Library'


Greetings Lists,

((Hi, I thought --technology list readers might be interested in this CALL
of gathering of thinkers and great minds to discuss the future of 10,000
year Library. A nice venture to be there! --Arun))
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 13:32:00 +0100
From: Stephen Clark <srlclark@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK>
[--]

From: <http://www.longnow.org/>

The Long Now Foundation and Stanford University Libraries announced they
will hold an invitational conference, "The 10,000-year Library," June 30 -
July 2, 2000 on the Stanford campus sponsored by the Lazy Eight
Foundation. Two dozen confirmed participants -
including Elizabeth Niggeman head of the German National Library;
cuneiform expert William Hallo of Yale University; leading innovators in
high-tech, such as Brewster Kahle the creator of the Internet Archive, an
extraordinary Native American anthropologist Dave Warren; Council on
Library and Information Resources director Deanna Marcum; and others -will
join the Long Now board (Michael A. Keller, Danny Hillis, Stewart Brand,
Brian Eno, Paul Saffo, Kevin Kelly, Peter Schwartz, and Doug Carlston) and
librarians to deliberate on the permanence of information and the nature
and need for long-term thinking about it. (See complete list of current
attendees at the bottom of this page.)

In a time of accelerating technology, accelerating history, and a
dangerous shortening of civilization's attention span, the role of
libraries becomes deeper than ever. Libraries need to be rethought in the
new context and in the light of civilization's now-global and very long
term responsibilities. Some new initiatives need to be set in motion. The
conference participants will address needed directions for such
initiatives. According to Stewart Brand, co-chairman of the Long Now
board, "We want to jump-start some serious, collaborative thinking about
how to see information - the real narrative of civilization - in very
long-term ways. We're talking in part about technology, but it goes much
deeper, right to the root of why we are here, what we're doing, and what
kind of legacy do we want to leave to our descendents and to their
successors."

"Stewardship of cultural content is the essential role of research
libraries," says Stanford University Librarian Michael A. Keller. "Serious
players in this field have always collected, organized, and preserved
information - OK, books, mostly - on behalf of future generations,
but up to now, we haven't really thought seriously about how many such
generations, or how to think about the mission in terms of thousands of
years. Digital information technologies, with their notorious instability,
force us to reassess how we go about fulfilling this mission hereafter.
So we are an interested party. But nobody knows what the important
questions are, to say nothing of solutions. This conference will be
tremendously valuable in helping to pose the right questions." Adds Brand,
"The issues are pan-disciplinary, so the group we're bringing together
is as broad as we can make it with a small group."

The format will be similar to what Long Now used successfully in 1998 at
the Getty Center in Los Angeles with a related conference called "Time &
Bits: Managing Digital Continuity." The participants will meet for dinner
and introductions Friday evening; scheme and probe all day Saturday; spell
out next steps Sunday morning, and sum up and for a public audience Sunday
afternoon. The public event - for invited press, scholars, technologists,
and others - will also include a question & answer session. (Details about
the public event will be announced later.)
Delivered at the conference will be the first prototype of the 'Rosetta
Disk' also being produced under the Lazy Eight Foundation Grant. This
modern Rosetta will be a micro-etched nickel two inch disk which will
include all the worlds translations of the book of Genesis written at a
scale to be read by microscopes. Expected outcomes of the conference
will be a publication and paths toward subsequent conferences, whose
topics should emerge from this conference. There may be recommendations to
specific institutions of actions to pursue.

The Long Now Foundation was officially established in 01996 to develop
the 10,000-Year Clock and 10,000-Year Library projects as well as to
become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. It has been
nearly 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age and the beginnings
of civilization. Progress during that time was often measured on a
"faster/cheaper" scale. The Long Now Foundation seeks to promote
"slower/better" thinking and to focus our collective creativity on the
next 10,000 years. One of its related projects is development of the
Rosetta Disk, a long-term linguistic archive and translation engine that
allows for the recovery of "lost" languages in the deep future, the
storage technology for which is a 2" nickel disk which records analog text
and images at densities up to 350,000 pages per disk, with a life
expectancy of 2,000-10,000 years. For more information about the Long
Now Foundation: <http://www.longnow.org/>

Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources
(SUL/AIR) develops and implements resources and services within the
University libraries and academic technology units that support research
and instruction. With collections containing over seven million
volumes and numerous of archival, manuscript, map, media, government
document, database and serial materials among its fourteen libraries,
SUL/AIR coordinates with Stanford's Business, Law, Medical, and SLAC
libraries and the Hoover Institution to provide comprehensive information
resources to the Stanford Community. The Academic Information Resources
division provides information-technology support and instruction and
network services to the entire campus community, whether in the library or
in the dorm. SUL/AIR's HighWire Press division provides advanced online
publication and access services to over 170 of the world's leading
peer-reviewed scholarly journals in science, technology, and medicine, and
thus is significantly involved in the provision of information to the
world's research and academic communities. For more information about the
Stanford Libraries: <http://www-sul.stanford.edu>

The Lazy Eight Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organization
dedicated to promoting research and development in the sciences and
education. It supports efforts to bring together scientists, artists, and
educators across disciplines, with a focus on projects that offer creative
solutions to educational, social and environmental problems. The Lazy
Eight Foundation works with its "Lazers," individuals from a broad range
of disciplines who advise the Foundation on various projects. For more
information about the Lazy Eight Foundation: <http://www.lazy8.org>
----




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