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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.
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