Back at the end of March, I was invited to a special meeting hosted by the Library of Congress. The meeting is entitled “Science at Risk: Toward a National Strategy for Preserving Online Science.” The meeting commences next week on June 26 and 27, and I am excited!

There are little details that I know about the event, but here is some info that I was forwarded:

Scholarly discourse, including interaction between scientists and the public, is rapidly changing and the ephemeral nature of this discussion on the web leaves it at substantial risk of being lost. Science blogs, the work of citizen scientists, and novel online publications like video journals are becoming the primary sources for understanding science in our times. These resources are almost exclusively online and increasingly at risk. The goal of this meeting is to begin identifying content that is valuable and at risk and to articulate next steps to ensure that this content is not lost.

In the face of this challenge, the Library of Congress, with generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, wishes to join with other organizations to develop a national strategy for collecting and preserving science and science discourse which exists only in digital form on the open web.  The Library would welcome your participation in the invitation-only workshop “Science at Risk: Toward a National Strategy for Preserving Online Science” to be held over one and a half days on June 26-27, 2012.  The event will bring together scientists and representatives from online science projects, archivists, and the historians and other scholars who will increasingly depend upon the historical record.

From what I’ve seen the guest list is full of impressive people, and for me to be included among them is a huge honor.

I’m going to be speaking on behalf of open notebook science and scientists. I’ll present various open notebooks, including my own, and current methods for successful and useful open notebook science. As the week goes on I’ll have more details about this and I’ll be notebooking my preparations. Next week I’ll do my best to document the meeting.

If you are an open notebook scientist and would like your notebook mentioned/featured then feel free to contact me on twitter (@thescienceofant), email (anthonysalvagnoatgmaildotcom), in the comments below, regular mail, on facebook, or smoke signals (but please be in the ABQ area otherwise I may not see it).