I read an interesting article about SVN at the following URL:

   http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/06/svn_homedir.html

 From the text:

   I have not lost a file since 1999, and I don't intend to
   ever again. Take one crucial file, like my resume or
   sent-mail archive. I have a copy of that file on my desktop
   computer in the .svn directory. There's another copy on my
   home directory on my laptop, and yet another copy in the
   Subversion repository on my server thousands of miles away.
   People tell me that the best backups take no effort--so you
   actually do them--and are widely scattered among many
   machines and a lot of area so a local disaster won't knock
   them out...

The reason I think this is interesting is in the light of library
preservation. Backing things up to tape is not archiving -- it's
backing up. Putting things on CD is close to archiving, but the
archivist needs to think about moving the data forward to newer mediums
as older mediums become obsolete.

The idea of using version control software to duplicate a person's data
over many computers does really not do the archival thing, but it does
to the preservation thing. One of the best ways to preserve a document
is to duplicate it many times and put those duplicates in many places.

Maybe us here in Library Land can figure out a way to use SVN to mirror
copies of our websites or other digital information. Hmmm...

--
Eric Morgan