The Library of Congress has been working together with other libraries and archives to save our digital heritage through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).
In 2000, the U.S. Congress, recognizing the importance of saving digital content for future generations, appropriated $100 million for the Library of Congress to work with libraries, archives, other federal agencies and the private sector to develop a strategy for a national digital preservation program.
In 2002, Congress approved the Library’s plan for "Preserving Our Digital Heritage." The plan’s guiding principles and directives have shaped NDIIPP’s progress and have led to many successes. Some milestones and the years they occurred:
Identifying and collecting digital content that is at risk of disappearing
2004: NDIIPP partners identify Web sites, digital television, business records, databases, geospatial data, cultural heritage documents and electronic publications that are at risk of being lost. More than 66 terabytes of digital files have been identified and selected for preservation (as of the end of fiscal 2006). (1 Tb is equivalent to the text of approximately 1 million books.)
2005: Portico, a nonprofit electronic archiving service, partners with NDIIPP to develop a business model for a continuing archiving service for scholarly resources published in electronic form, beginning with electronic scholarly journals.
Assembling a national community to work together to save digital information
2004: Eight digital preservation consortia are the backbone of the network of partners to collect and preserve geospatial information, Web sites, digital television, social science datasets, business records from the dot com era and cultural heritage documents.
2006: The Section 108 Study Group holds two public roundtables in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C., to gather insights and opinions on how to revise copyright exceptions for libraries and archives under Section 108 of the Copyright Act.
Developing new tools and processes for taking care of digital information
2004: The National Science Foundation and NDIIPP work together on a research agenda for digital preservation, called "It’s About Time."
2004: Four universities, Harvard, Stanford, Old Dominion and Johns Hopkins, participate in a preservation test that simulates the effects of long-term changes in technology on digital content.
2005: Ten research awards are made jointly by the National Science Foundation and the Library
2006: Stanford University becomes a partner to collaborate on development of NDIIPP’s technical architecture.