Dear 156 Squadron Contributor,
You may have at some time in the past either contacted me thru the 156 Squadron
website, or have made postings on the message board or Forum.
Many have made contributions of photos, background info etc (I have to admit
some still not published!).
Others have made corrections and clarifications to some of the site data and I
always appreciate this.
Thank you all for your input. It appears to have been rewarded.
I have recently been contacted by the Australian War Memorial with a request (I
consider it more of an honour) for the site to be Archived by the Australian
National Library's archive system (PANDORA).
What this in effect means is that the 156 Squadron site will be available on the web in perpetuity.
It has always been a concern to me that when I disappeared the site may also
follow, it appears now that this will not be the case.
Why the Australian War Memorial? Well I have been in contact with them on many
occasions researching the RAAF content of the website and there is a fairly
strong Australian contingent in the Squadron. That I am Australian may also have
helped.
This selection is even more satisfying in that it is one of
only a few "private sites" to be selected by the Australian War Memorial
since the archive was formed.
Thanks to all for your contributions which have made this honour possible. If
any contributor to the site who has had material published and now wishes it to
be withdrawn then could they please let me know. Be assured that you still
retain copyright to any such material.
This does not mean that development of the site is over - far from it, there is still much to do.
How this unfolded.
----------- Initial email from Australian War Memorial 14/12/08
-
http://www.awm.gov.au/
The Australian War Memorial Research Centre aims to build a comprehensive
collection of publications relating to the Australian experience of war to
assist all Australians to remember, interpret and understand the Australian
experience of war and its enduring impact on Australian society both now and in
the future. The library has
traditionally collected items in print, but
we are now committed to preserving electronic publications of lasting cultural
value.
PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, was set up by the National Library in 1996 to
enable the archiving and provision of long-term access to online Australian
publications. Accordingly, as a PANDORA partner, the Australian War Memorial has
been identifying, assessing, selecting and cataloguing sites of relevance to
Australian military history for archiving by the National Library of Australia
as part of the PANDORA project. Additional information about PANDORA can be
found on the Library's server at: http://pandora.nla.gov.au
We would like to include the 156 Squadron website (http://www.156squadron.com/)
in the PANDORA Archive and I would be grateful if you would let me know whether
you are willing to permit us to do so, that is, grant us a licence under the
Copyright Act 1968, to copy your publication into the Archive and to provide
public access to it via the Internet. This means that you would grant the
National Library permission to retain
your publication in the Archive and to provide access to it in perpetuity.
We assume that in granting permission all contributors to your publication are
informed and in agreement that their work will be archived by the National
Library.
There are some benefits to you as a publisher in having your publication
archived by the Library. If you grant us a copyright licence, the Australian War
Memorial in partnership with the National Library of Australia will take the
necessary preservation action to keep your publication accessible as hardware
and software changes over time. The Research Centre of the Australian War
Memorial will catalogue your publication and add the record to our online book
database at: http://www.awm.gov.au/firstopac/
----------- Subsequent email 24/12/2008
I am delighted to inform you that your site 156 Squadron RAF
(www.156squadron.com) is now publicly available in the PANDORA Archive. I have
scheduled it to be re-gathered every 6 months so that we may have an archived
copy of the most current site.
The publication has been catalogued as
one of a collection of sites selected to represent specific subject areas that
we are interested in collecting and preserving for the future. The
catalogue record for the site will soon been included in the Australian War
Memorial's Research Centre online public access catalogue available at:
http://www.awm.gov.au/firstopac/
or you can go directly to the archived version at the following address:
http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-92021
When accessing the archived version, a title entry page is displayed first. It
includes the name of each publication with links to each archived version, as
well as to the original publishers' sites, to publishers' copyright statements,
a general copyright warning, and other information about the archive.
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So keep sending any details you have on the Squadron,
secure in the knowledge that
they will be around for a long time.
Regards
Robin Riley www.156Squadron.com