Digital Age in the By Kevin
Arc P h o t o I l l u s t r a t i o n b y S t r o b o P h o t o , © 1 1 / 0 1
Challenges and Opportunities Presented by Archiving in the Electronic Era
With the rapid development of electronic and network technologies, there is considerable and justifiable concern in the academic community about the challenges associated with protecting electronic information for future generations of scholars and students. As a not-for-profit organization founded specifically to build and provide a trusted central repository of important journal literature in electronic form, JSTOR has been working on the problem of electronic archiving since its founding. Unfortunately, there are no simple or easy solutions to this problem and this brief essay does not attempt to provide them. Rather, the purpose of this paper is to share JSTOR's experience and reflect upon the key principles we have identified that must be addressed if one is to maintain reliable long-term access to electronic content. The scope of this archiving discussion is limited to published journal literature, admittedly a small subset of the digital materials that require attention. Still, many of the issues raised in the journals context apply more generally as well.
History of Amateurism in Men's Intercollegiate Athletics: The Continuance of a 19th-Century Anachronism in America
Claiming that American intercollegiate athletics are amateur at the end of the 20th century is an anachronism, for colleges in the 19th century took on professional characteristics. The upper-class British concept of amateurism did not work effectively in a more egalitarian and achievement-oriented American society. Hypocrisy resulted when colleges claimed amateurism while accepting such professional practices as hiring professional coaches, allowing athletes to play summer baseball for money, and paying athletes through grants-in-aid. Attempts to preserve amateurism, such as the Graham Plan in the 1930s and the Sanity Code in the 1940s and 1950s, yielded to the professional spirit. Thus, while Americans had generally rejected the upper-class British social hierarchy that fostered amateurism, they retained the name amateur, continuing the hypocrisy that had begun in the previous century.