I was intrigued enough to check out your link to Education 2015. As one of the original ‘talking heads’ at Bangor in ‘94, I was disappointed (but not surprised) to find that apart from the front page of Ultralab, it all seems to have disappeared. Considering the changes in the last dozen years from the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies to the end of free Higher Education, it would have been interesting to see how much we predicted correctly. Hardly in the league of the Beeb wiping videotapes from the past so they could re-use them, but annoying all the same. How can we learn from our mistakes if we can no longer access them? At least the book is still at SCHOME.

To answer your question, then yes, archives are important. Old technologies allowed researchers to hunt (albeit laboriously) through ancient tomes kept in libraries. Digital storage is wonderful for complex searches and sppeedy access but can disappear with one keystroke. This shouldn’t depend on the whim of whoever runs IT Services - universities need a policy of archiving everything, even if it’s only available under the Freedom of Information Act.

I speak as someone who used to work at a university where during one summer vacation, my department was ‘restructured’. Vast amounts of development work disappeared when IT Services were told to remove the website - PVC’s comment: ‘Why would they need the website? There’s a new one where they now work!’