If we succeed, our reports will show other scientific organizations how to establish low-cost mechanisms for gathering much historical information that would otherwise be lost. It is becoming impossible to maintain a full record of the progress of science and technology. One way to meet this challenge is to develop innovative methods using the technology scientists themselves have adopted. We propose to experiment with using sites on the World-Wide Web to gather historical source materials. The Internet is becoming the method of first choice for researchers to store and exchange information.
Web sites offer the most flexible and appealing way to exploit the Internet.
These organizations arewell placed to overcome the chief problems of using the World-Wide Web. Each of the three organizations will develop the informational content of its Web sites independently, and we will experiment with different structures in some respects. A major part of our effort in the first year will go into writing specifications, selecting from the basic packages commercially available and obtaining programming specific to our applications. Throughout this and subsequent work the staff will keep in close contact to learn from each others' experience. Our normal mode of communication is e-mail, but each organization has offices in the Washington, DC area and staff can readily get together.