Featured Research

University of Maryland-led Partnership Gets $235,000 Award to Help
Preserve Documents and Tales from Historic Dot-Com Era; Library of
Congress Award Part of National Digital Preservation Strategy

Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business have received a $235,000 award from the Library of Congress to strengthen a two-year-old initiative to preserve records from the historic dot-com era of the late 1990s. Researchers will use the grant to develop a digital repository to house business records and other materials collected through the Business Plan Archive (BPA), which was launched in 2002. The BPA is a Web portal located at www.businessplanarchive.org and contains business plans, marketing plans, technical plans, venture presentations, and other business documents from more than 2,000 failed and successful Internet start-ups.

The Library of Congress grant will be matched by financial and in-kind contributions from the project’s partners, bringing the total size of the project to nearly $480,000. These partners include leading practitioners in the fields of digital humanities (Center for History and New Media; www.chnm.gmu.edu); Internet archiving (Internet Archive; www.archive.org); and digital evidence (Gallivan, Gallivan & O’Melia; www.digitalwarroom.com).

“The need to save these materials is evident,” said David Kirsch, the project’s lead researcher and assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “The team we have assembled will help us figure out what can be saved, what should be saved, and exactly how best to do it.”

In the second phase of the Business Plan Archive project, researchers will collect detailed personal narratives from the “refugees” or “working class” of the Internet boom and bust. Entrepreneurs, employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and others touched by this historic period can submit their stories by completing a survey at www.dotcomarchive.org, the BPA’s new companion Web portal. These stories will join the business records as part of the BPA and will also be part of the Library of Congress digital preservation project.

“The materials that we are collecting are, and will continue to be, of incalculable historic value to Americans eager to make sense of this remarkable period of venture creation,” said Kirsch. “We are delighted that the Library of Congress has identified our work as an important component of its national digital preservation strategy.”

“Recent estimates suggest that upwards of 30 percent of all business records produced today never touch paper,” said Laura Campbell, associate librarian for strategic initiatives for the Library of Congress, and the librarian in charge of administering the program. “Future generations’ understanding of the business history of this era will depend upon our ability to develop technical and institutional mechanisms for helping identify, characterize and preserve these materials.”

In addition to the partners mentioned above, the Smith School-led project includes Snyder, Miller & Orton LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm. Overall, the partnership is one of just eight nationwide to receive funding in this first round of grants and the only group focusing exclusively on capturing and preserving business records for future generations.

The Library of Congress program is officially named the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). In December 2000, Congress authorized the Library of Congress to develop and execute a congressionally approved plan for the program. The goal is to build a network throughout the country of committed partners working through a preservation architecture with defined roles and responsibilities. Congress approved the plan in December 2002. More information about NDIIPP is available at www.digitalpreservation.gov.