Background 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 already has a Web server containing scientific publications which they will maintain for posterity. New Web sites are easily lost to view amid the chaotic growth of the medium. All three organizations have mechanisms for reaching the relevant populations of researchers. They can offer guarantees of value through well- established mechanisms, developed for their print publications, to certify the validity of their sites as reliable repositories for particular types of information.