Setting the stage, in conclusion

For selecting the digital objects a collection should be composed of, the goals of an archive have to be constituted. Thereby, the scope of the archive needs to be delimited on the basis of a given source for the material. Furthermore, which data types are to be included in the repository is an essential decision to take. If the hereby located documents are to be filtered in order to guarantee a consistent and well assorted collection, a policy for the criteria of the selection has to be specified.

In the following the focus will be on an archive striving to preserve the digital presence of a country. (This is motivated by our experience with The Austrian On-Line Archive (cf. Section 4), which has the task to preserve the digital cultural heritage of Austria.) It is a long-term project, designed to convey an impression of the digital present over time to future generations. The source of this national archive is all open-access digital material, specifically the World Wide Web. As discussed in Section 2.1.1 the scope will be delimited along three lines

• the national domain of the country
• a web-server registered within a given country
• domains of interest for the very country

There is no constraint on the data types of the available material, nor is any sort of selection performed on the documents. The project embarks on such a comprehensive strategy as it is deemed impossible to sincerely judge upon what will be considered, respectively, valuable and worthless in the future.