Publishing for the long term

A major thrust of my thinking, some of which has been reflected in earlier posts here, is that there needs to be a good way to publish one's research on the net for the long term.

It's easy enough to publish most anything on the web, but such publishing is very ephemeral. It often stays published for only a few months or a couple of years. There are many reasons for this, such as a provider going out of business or changing its policies, the poster failing to continue supporting his site, whether due to a loss of interest or a change of circumstances, etc. The broken links and outdated web references we all encounter are symptoms of this.

This is a particularly acute problem for family history information. The time between publication of genealogical data and much of its usage is very often measured in years or decades, sometimes centuries. In my own research I have often relied on works a hundred or more years old. In the U.S., there was a relatively large wave of genealogical publication in the 1880 to 1920 period, and the works published then remain significant resources for genealogists today.

The rise of the internet has engendered a similar wave of interest in genealogy, and has lead to much genealogical data and research being posted on the web. Yet the results of all this enthusiasm are beset by inadequate preservation of the research so published. Hosting services are changed, sites reorganized, domain registrations not maintained, site generation software replaced, pages are forgotten and deleted unnoticed, hosting fees not paid, and on and on.

Family history used to be recorded only on flimsy paper pages. Nevertheless, these have survived many decades and our generation benefits. The new electronic memory, wonderfully capable as it is, still makes me wistful for the robustness of paper.