The Wired Campus blog reports that the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina has provided this year's new library students with a special new perq: the LifeTime Library, with free data storage for their lifetimes. The idea is to create a personal digital archive maintained by the university that will last as long as the student does: a collection of coursework, transcripts, photos, music, videos, medical records and anything else people might want to preserve. The Dean of the School, Prof. Gary Marchionini, says "We're really developing digital lives that are paralleling our real, or analog, lives. What if we actually helped students when they're here at UNC think about this more seriously by giving them more storage space where they could manage their own digital lives and keep that available to them after they graduate?" Server space is a precious resource at universities, and most universities delete the data files of students once they graduate or leave to make room for their successors. Many students preserve their college experience, from class notes to photos, on laptops or social networking sites, but hard-drive crashes are routine, and data backup habits are not widespread. Ultimately, Prof. Marchionini hopes the LifeTime Library will be available to all UNC students, but a number of logistical hurdles, cost foremost among them, stand in the way. "The issue is, how do we support it?" he said. "If you think of it over 20 or 30 years, it's an enormous undertaking."
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