SGER: Plan for a History of the Internet Digital Archive

该SGER将探索识别、定位并创建一个开放、易于访问的重要材料数字档案的可能性，这些重要材料记录了促进互联网发展的活动、政策和过程。1968年（DARPA开始网络研发）到1985年（NSFNet退役）之间进行的研发记录是脆弱的。随着时间的推移，记录丢失或分散，使恢复变得不可能或非常昂贵。那个时期的许多记录是非正式的（例如，电子邮件），除非现在采取措施找到并获得它们，否则可能永远无法恢复。此外，参与这一早期研发的前政府官员和学术伙伴也在变老。现在需要采取步骤，确保对这一时期的所有重要参与者进行面谈，并尽可能提供他们这一时期的个人记录。与计算机历史博物馆和其他档案馆建立了合作伙伴关系，这些档案馆已经开始收集这些材料中的一些，以及与乔治华盛顿大学的ECHO计划建立了合作伙伴关系，该计划致力于在线探索和收集历史。这里采取的方法是把所有这些不同的资源放在一起，并对需要收集的内容进行系统的收集，以使这个互联网档案成为一个确定的、详尽的收集。研究过程中产生的信息，并将其保存在档案中供未来的研究人员使用，将有助于更准确地理解大学-政府-产业合作的协同作用，以及科技政策、研发和教育与技术、经济和社会进步的联系。

This SGER will explore the possibility of identifying, locating, and then creating an open, easily accessible digital archive of important materials that document the activities, policies, and processes that contributed to the evolution of the Internet. Records of the R&D carried out between 1968 (the initiation of networking R&D at DARPA) and 1985 (the decommissioning of the NSFNet) are fragile. As time passes, records are lost or dispersed, making it impossible or very costly to recover. Many of the records of that period are informal (e.g., email) and may never be recovered unless steps are taken now to locate and acquire them. In addition, the former government officials and academic partners who participated in this early R&D are getting older. Steps need to be taken now to insure that all important participants from that period have been interviewed and that their personal records of that period be made available where possible. Partnerships are being established with the Computer History Museum, and other archives, which have already begun to collect some of these materials, as well as with the George Washington University's ECHO Program, which is devoted to exploring and collecting history online. The approach taken here is to be bring all these disparate resources together and to become systematic about what needs to be collected to make this Internet archive a definitive, exhaustive collection. The information generated during this research and then made available in the archive to future researchers will contribute to more accurate understandings of the synergy of university-government-industry collaboration and the linkages of science and technology policy, R &D and education to advances in technology, the economy and society.