[Air-l] my e-mail archives

[jeremy hunsinger]

>
>
> I'm almost overwhelmed thinking about how historical work may change 
> as a result, but also overwhelmed thinking about what we can and may 
> need to do to make sense of what we have when so much is available. 
> Let's go data-crazy and link my e-mails to yours, Jeremy, and on and 
> on and on, and build a vaster and vaster archive. 


I could see something like this happening, not necessarily in academia, 
but certainly in upper management of companies.  Building an archive of 
e-mail actions via the internet, having to sort out any personal 
materials, etc.  We have already seen this set of problems in the 
Clinton white house archives.

>
>
> Not only are there various legal, ethical and methodological issues 
> with which to grapple, there are some very practical ones as well. I 
> was recently involved in discussions with a group of people in D.C. to 
> help the Library of Congress figure out how to procure, archive, 
> maintain, etc., materials that are, in their words, "born digital."

one of my problems also as i also have around well nearly 21 gb of 
material that i've produced at VT in one year or another, and material 
that I've nabbed from the net.  This is also a problem of nearly every 
university in the world.  I have had to deal with several instances 
where someone has put material online that they had rights to one year, 
but found out that it was derivative in some manner and had to be 
removed, sometimes this was even after the faculty had left the university.

>  That is, I suspect we all have this sense of the "stuff" that we have 
> on our disks and hard drives, but how does that intersect and 
> interplay with how we feel about the box of letters we keep in the closet?

you see, i don't have a box of letters in my closet. I have my e-mail 
and very few letters that would mean anything to anyone.  Most of my 
acceptances to grad school and rejections first came via e-mail then 
they came in post.  most of my work is e-mail or digital, i hardly ever 
print something if i can stand it, moreso now that i broke my local 
printer and have to print down to the workroom, though I'll fix that 
soon enough.  But yes, I think these are my letters.

as to the archive nature of them, most of my materials that i've worked 
on are archived on a server.  I do not keep most of them local on my 
computer.  however, they are not marked up or anything, which is 
somewhat what i was doing in a defacto sense by webifying them yesterday 
so that i could run a search engine over them to get better management 
capabilities.

>


-- 
jeremy hunsinger		http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy
cddc/political science		http://www.cddc.vt.edu
526 major williams hall 0130	http://www.dromocracy.com
virginia tech			-under construction
blacksburg, va 24061
540-231-7614