This forum is being archived into the British Library

[Mickey]

As reported on BBC radio 4 this morning (05/04/13) ALL on line websites, forums, blogs & tweets from midnight tonight (06/05/13) will be archived by the British Library for future public use into research & studies purposes.

Apparently over the last 17 or 18 years since the rise of the Internet many websites & forums have come and gone without being logged for future generations to study them so as of midight tonight all current websites & forums will be archived by the British Library just as newspapers & books have been over the last few hundred years.

[strang steel]

That does seem like a good idea, as long as there is a searchable index.

I for one have not seen many of the great photos that used to be on Fotopic, since that site closed down. They may be somewhere out there, but I have yet to find some of them.

[Bryan]

Whilst I was doing an Archaeology course back in 1999 the view was expressed then that;
What are future researchers going to have to work with?
This was because of the amount of work now being done on computer and the lack of hardcopy on paper from all aspects of life as there has been up to present.
Paper record survival is very common but computer records even from the 80s and 90s are at risk because the mediums used have died out.
Think of Floppy Discs for one or should I say TWO.
Its not just the medium either but the means to recover and play the record have also gone or going.
VHS, BETA, Reel to Reel, Cassette tape.

[Bill Bedford]

As reported on BBC radio 4 this morning (05/04/13) ALL on line websites, forums, blogs & tweets from midnight tonight (06/05/13) will be archived by the British Library for future public use into research & studies purposes.

You missed a bit from the announcement. That is that the BL will only be archiving sites with .uk URLs. So this forum will not be part of the scheme.

[Mickey]

As reported on BBC radio 4 this morning (05/04/13) ALL on line websites, forums, blogs & tweets from midnight tonight (06/05/13) will be archived by the British Library for future public use into research & studies purposes.

You missed a bit from the announcement. That is that the BL will only be archiving sites with .uk URLs. So this forum will not be part of the scheme.

Ok Bill but the way it was annouced (the way i heard it anyway?) was that ALL websites including forums, blogs tweets etc etc were going to be archived into the British Library as of 06/05/13 i don't recall any distinctions being made?.

How did they get an agreement for ALL 'tweets' millions of them to be archived??.

[richard]

They don't need any permission to archive 'tweets', and the US Library of Congress is already archiving them so it is likely Twitter would agree to it. In terms of IP, no additional permission is required - every tweeter has already agreed that the tweets are public. The only permission that is required is to the high volume data feed that twitter provide (someone like myself would need to put up a good case to get access to "fire hydrant" mode, whilst "spritzer" mode is free)

[65447]

Whilst I was doing an Archaeology course back in 1999 the view was expressed then that;
What are future researchers going to have to work with?
This was because of the amount of work now being done on computer and the lack of hardcopy on paper from all aspects of life as there has been up to present.
Paper record survival is very common but computer records even from the 80s and 90s are at risk because the mediums used have died out.
Think of Floppy Discs for one or should I say TWO.
Its not just the medium either but the means to recover and play the record have also gone or going.
VHS, BETA, Reel to Reel, Cassette tape.

Fear not, for The National Archives retains the technical means to read old formats and content, so not just your floppy files but also the likes of your Wordstar documents are still accessible.