>>> According to an article in Education Week, the US Department of Education is in the process of overhauling its Website. One of its main goals is to remove reports, research, statistics, etc. published before 2001, especially material that doesn't support the Bush Administration's approach to education. However, The Memory Hole will be preserving much of this material.

In "No URL Left Behind?: Web Scrub Raises Concerns," Michelle R. Davis reports:

A directive that went to senior staff members and the Web site office at the end of May mapped out just how that sweep would take place. Some of the problems with the site, according to the memo, include difficulties with navigation, mediocre graphics, and information that is either outdated or "does not reflect the priorities, philosophies, or goals of the present administration."

Each assistant secretary received a list of files slated for the chopping block. According to the May 31 directive, everything on the site dated before February 2001, just after President Bush took office, will be removed unless it is needed for legal reasons or it supports the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001— the president's key education measure—or other administration initiatives. Some information can remain if it's important for historical perspective or a policy reason. Staff can argue to keep older files, but an assistant secretary must approve the decision, the memo says.

Each assistant secretary has formed a group that includes at least one person who "understands the policy and priorities of the administration" to review Web content. An eight-person "content-review board" of administration hires chosen from areas throughout the department will approve the final list....

The popular digests put out by the Educational Resources Information Center make up one big chunk of data that may soon disappear from ed.gov. ERIC, the 30-year-old data-collection center of the education world, produces about 160 digests a year from its 16 informational clearinghouses. The four-page briefing papers on "hot topics" address everything from class size to bilingual education.

"I understand the ERIC digests are scheduled to be pulled," said Lawrence M. Rudner, the director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation. "The digests are extremely popular and a very important product of the system."

This is the very definition of George Orwell's memory hole--destroying material that conflicts with the current political climate.

The Education Department has said that it might possibly, if it feels like it, put the deleted information on CD-ROMs that will be available at some libraries. Not good enough.

The Memory Hole is not going to sit by while the federal government erases massive amounts of information. Using a Website-capturing program, we have already downloaded around one gigabyte of publications from the Department of Education and affiliated Websites. This has been backed up on CD-ROMs. If the scrubbing of this information takes place, we will upload as much of it as possible to our Website. This material will not be destroyed.

As a small preemptive move, we're putting all 848 pre-1982 "ERIC Digests" on our site. We hope the Bush Administration and various educrats will take note: There's a lot more where this came from.

We urge anyone interested in keeping knowledge alive to download and store as much material as possible from the Education Department's Website. Especially crucial is the "Research and Stats" section, which contains most of the material headed for the bonfire.

Two good tools for capturing Websites are the freeware HHTrack and the commercial software Web Whacker.

If you mirror any of this material on your Website, please let us know so that we can link to it.

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