Following my posting of the initial response to my Open Letter, Jim Thatcher wrote back to me:
“Thanks Chris. My team will be working on this issue to try to come up with a more concrete path forward. For now, if any of your readers have specific needs I would encourage them to work with third-party vendors (as you did) to convert the obsolete documents. Archival organizations with long-term structural needs that can’t be addressed by a one-shot conversion project can contact me directly at jim.thatcher(at)Microsoft.com.
Please keep me apprised of thee community’s suggestions for crowd-sourcing those document formats.
Regards,
Jim Thatcher
Principal Program Manager
Office Standards and Interoperability”
I’m currently struggling to find any person or organisation willing to take some leadership in that response; this is moving beyond what I can achieve in a back bedroom! So BL, TNA, LoC, NARA, NLA, NLNZ, OCLC, JISC, Knowledge Exchange, EC, even CNI and DPC (and others), I’m looking at you!
Unsustainable Ideas 