ArchivePress – Interview: Richard Davis

Sep 5, 2009 by michelle-pauli

Richard Davis, project manager of ArchivePress, explains how the project will help institutions to preserve their researchers’ blog postsWhat is ArchivePress?Last year we did a project on archive preservation and discovered that it is not well supported at many universities. Blogging in particular is overlooked and, as many researchers are blogging about their work,  this project is about trying to create repositories of blog posts at academic institutions.What problems/issues is ArchivePress tackling?Blog posts are very volatile. They may disappear or change at any time so if the institution can keep a reliable or authentic copy then that can be cited by others.How would you like other software developers and users to get involved in what you are doing?We are using a bit of software called WordPress, which is blogging software, and we are using third party plug ins developed by their developers so we are discussing with them ways to enhance the extensions they have created and adapting them to some special uses especially for blog preservation.What developer communities have you been involved in and if none, why not?We have been involved with digital archives and preservation developments and web archiving initiatives generally so have been involved with people working in that area and looked to them for advice and guidance on steering the functionality of the application. And WordPress, of course.What is the coolest or most exciting thing in educational software development?Definitely cloud computing.