1. Adobe (Acrobat) Reader,
2. Open Source software and databases.

And I put them in order for a reason; no sense setting up a dB if there’s nothing to put in there.

Archives are labor intensive, and generally underfunded. But invaluable.

For example, 20 years ago I worked with some researchers who had boxes and boxes of punch cards that they either needed to throw away (hence destroying their archive) or reload onto a computer to then re-save them on magnetic tape (to preserve their archive). Since then, newer long-term storage technologies have come and gone. Another example is the effort to preserve early software (particularly games) now that the early hardware is gone. Do you rewrite the code to run on the new hardware or do you use a software package to emulate the old hardware?

Archiving has lots of technical complications. This is all largely beside the point in this discussion of what the Executive Branch has been up to, but since massacio was asking about the difference between backups and archives, I just wanted to mention it. For the most part, a backup is intended to permit the restoration of files to the hardware/software system you are currently using. An archivist needs to figure out how to maintain records indefinitely, which is why they place so much emphasis on hardware/software independence.

http://portland.indymedia.org/…..0049.shtml

The Emails that Dick Cheney Deleted
Harper’s Magazine by Scott Horton
January 22, 2008

…The missing Cheney emails fit a pattern that suggests intentional rather than accidental destruction. They all occur on days on which, considering contemporaneous press reports, the Vice President or his staff members were in the news and would likely have been communicating on the subjects relating to the press coverage. The most persistent themes are the outing of Valerie Plame and Cheney’s secret dealings with a group of oil and gas executives who were directly influencing national energy policy. The Empty Wheel has some excellent analysis of these points.