[Taxacom] Obscure web site

[Dr Brian Taylor]

Dear John,

Your news raises, perhaps, the apparently neglected question of legacy and
web sites. Whilst institutions devote resources, arguably inadequate, to the
maintenance of libraries and so preserve the legacy of the printed word,
there seems little evidence that electronic media are regarded as worthy of
support let alone maintenance.

At the beginning of this year and without any warning to me, the AMNH shut
down my website on the ants of Africa.  Originally fortunately, as an
earlier hosting group had closed due to retirement of the group leader and
transfer of the group to another institution, my site had been hosted by the
AMNH under the umbrella of Antbase.org for several years.  Due to supposed
concern over copyright content the AMNH shut Antbase and so shut my website.
No such concerns had been expressed over my site but an appeal to them to
keep the site open with supporting evidence as to its wide useage fell on
deaf ears.  Whilst I could do what you appear to have done and pay my
personal ISP a monthly fee for storage space that does not answer the legacy
factor, if and when I become unable to keep a personal space open.

With foresight I had requested the UK Web Archive to include my sites (one
on the Ants of Egypt remains unaffected) in its national archive.  Thus the
pre-2012 contents remain preserved but I cannot update that content.

The archived content can be accessed at
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20101217230047/http://antbase.o
rg/ants/africa/ for those who wonder at the merit of my concern.

Regards,

Brian Taylor


On 09/08/2012 05:07, "John Grehan" <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:

> For those few that may be interested, my panbiogeography, human evolution,
> and ghost moth web pages are now resurrected at http://johngrehan.net/
> 
> Due to an unfortunate trend in the US (but not limited to, apparently) I
> lost my institutional resources and had to reestablish my web site on these
> topics. To date the panbiogeographic and human evolution pages are still
> only cursory, but hopefully time will allow for their future expansion.
> Since few care about the content I wonder why I bother. Must have something
> to do with my ego. Or something.
> 
> John Grehan
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