Somehow we come to expect that the internet will always be there for us: information, emails, newspaper articles, etc but what happens when you wake up one morning and all that information you have recorded has suddenly disappeared overnight due to a site being taken down? With no word of warning, thousands of photographs and information have disappeared from the British Fotopic site. Sadly, the British Rock Art Collection, an invaluable record of rock art, was hosted on Fotopic and as the following words imply the loss is indeed great…

 

Fotopic hosted not only the “British Rock Art Collection (BRAC)” and the “Worldwide Rock Art Selection (WRAS)” for about six years but thousands of other websites with over 27 million photos on-line. With over 18,000 rock art photos on-line and over half a million photo hits so far, the site was used by many rock art enthusiasts from around the world. But it was not only the photos – hundreds of them contributed by our good rock art friends – that are no longer enjoyable on the web. Stories and literary thousands of links to relevant information are gone as well. Thousands of clients trusted the company and lost all their photos what makes it double sad. The chance of a re-appearance of the site gets slimmer by the day and we foresee that we will never get a glimpse of its content again. And no one saw this coming; no warning in advance… e-mail bounced back, telephone lines dead… over & out!

Hopefully BRAC will rise like a phoenix out of the dust and re-assemble a new website but what has been lost is of course irreplaceable.

Conservation by record? Make sure there are non-electronic (paper) backups of the information!

http://rockartuk.wordpress.com/