Unit 5, Article 23: Archiving Writers’ Work in the Age of Email

Reference:

Kolowich, S. (2009). Archiving writers’ work in the age of e-mail. In P. De Palma (Ed.), Annual editions: Computers in sodity (pp. 105-107). New York: McGraw Hill.

Summary:

In this brief article Steve Kolowich describes some of the challenges that archivists are facing as data turns digital. For many years, the processes used by archivists for preserving data have been pretty much the same. They receive paper manuscripts from authors, they preserve the paper, and they keep the information organized and catalogued in a way that makes it easy for researchers to find information they are looking for. Now, as writers have begun to write on the computer and save their work electronically, archivists are challenged with designing a new system that preserves electronic data and keeps is in a format that is accessible as technology rapidly changes.

Archivists are also facing questions about ownership. For data that has been stored by someone on his or her computer hard drive or their personal floppy disks, it is easy to specify ownership. If an author or author’s family decides to donate her works to a library, they can give the library a laptop computer or a box of floppy disks. However, it is not clear how who owns much of the information that has been posted online. If an author created a blog or communicated frequently with colleagues via email or facebook messages the data might belong to the author or it may belong to the company that owns the servers where the data is being kept.

The author summarizes his article by pointing out that so far we have no manual on how to properly archive an author’s work in the present day. No one is sure how much information to keep, what the best way is to store the data, or where the funds will come from for reference libraries to purchase the new technology that will be necessary. The good news is that we have access to so much great technology and resources that it should not be too difficult to figure out a process.

Reaction:

I found this article interesting because it brought up topics that I have never considered before. The computer does give us a tremendous ability to store data about someone’s life and the opportunity to learn about what a person did on the computer from day to day. The computer stores so much information about us that it seems to me like it could be an invasion of someone’s privacy to look too deeply even after they are gone. Before the digital age, an author had a choice about which of their writings they wanted to be published and which they wanted to keep secrete. They had the power to throw a stack of old letters in the fire or to rip them up and throw them out. Now, most of a person’s correspondence done online by email, chat or social networking sites and stored on serves that they do not own. I suppose it is an exciting concept for scholars and researchers who want to have access to as much information as possible, but I can’t help but feeling like we are invading people’s privacy by tapping into their browser histories, email, and other life online.