Monday, July 30, 2007

Web 2.0 - Code4Lib addresses Data Mgmt - When will You?

As you know, I've been concerned about the institutions that host data for Web 2.0 applications. Code4lib, a major library 2.0 site (and everything else hosted on anvil.lisforge.net) was hacked on July 21 and is still not available. They are hoping to have everything back on Aug 1 - we'll see.

And 6 back-to-back power outages hit the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco last Tuesday afternoon causing major havoc with popular web services. 365 Main was down, along with craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, AdBrite and SixApart (including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox). Many other popular sites such as CNet were unavailable too.

I wrote a couple of posts about these problems and suggested that it is is greater issue earlier - this one on the 365 Main Outage and some thoughts and this one on if you trust online sites to protect your data re: Code4lib.

Well, Code4lib is taking this seriously (as they certainly should) and is hosting a special discussion on August 1st to discuss this. Here is the announcement from their Planet Code4lib website (the only code4lib site currently available).

"You are invited to a special discussion in #code4lib on irc.freenode.net on 1 August 2007 at 1900 GMT about how to prevent this from happening again. We're going to be talking about moving some of the web applications to institutions that are better set up to manage them."

I am thrilled that code4lib is now thinking about this and I hope they can recover all their data in a timely manner. And I hope that other organizations that are heavily web-based will follow their lead and seriously look at who is hosting their data and that they are thinking about ensuring that they know what is in place to protect them.

In the Web 2.0 world, it isn't just about content and collaboration and new ways to interact. Now that these Web 2.0 concepts are coming to fruition and are becoming valuable resources, it is time to look at making sure they are operating in a stable and protected environment.

~Susan Mellott

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