SXSW 2006, Digital Preservation and Blogs
January 30th, 2006Josh Greenberg, Alison Headley, Colin Wells, Mike Linksvayer and I will be presenting at SXSW this year.
The Short Version
The web is a fragile medium, subject to digital decay. A new blog preservation effort at The New York Public Library shows how librarians might save our digital heritage.
The Long Version
How will tomorrow’s historians understand the development and impact of blogs? What evidence will future researchers turn to when they want to examine the influence that blogs had on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, or how a blog post disgraced 60 Minutes by revealing that what was believed by Dan Rather to be a legitimate memo about George W. Bush’s military service was a forgery? What primary source material will show that it was a blogger who filed a Freedom of Information Act request and posted 361 snapshots of coffins of solders killed in the US war in Iraq?
The emergence of the early web, and of blogging, stands to be like early film; if the preservation of blogs does not begin soon, most of the initial output of this new medium and genre will be lost, and future understanding will be limited to the scraps that survive.
This fall, a group of students in the Library and Information School at Pratt worked on a small project to preserve a handful of blogs. SXSW will be hosting a panel discussion with to discuss this project, and the larger set of technical, social and legal problems posed by the preservation of blogs.
This should be a great panel. I’m looking forward to it!
by Jeremy Boggs February 14th, 2006 at 10:48 am[…] NM’s own Josh Greenburg is part of a panel on digital preservation and blogs, organized by Carrie Bickner-Zeldman, at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive festival. Should be a great panel.! […]
by Digital Preservation and Blogs | ClioWeb February 14th, 2006 at 10:53 am[…] l be presenting at the 2006 Semantic Technology Conference, then on to SXSW for a panel on digital preservation and blogs and silly parties, but leaving too soon to see the great Savage Republic perfo […]
by Mike Linksvayer » Creative Commons Salon San Francisco March 3rd, 2006 at 1:06 am