[Air-L] Usenet archives / Internet history

[camille paloque berges]

Dear air-l members,

I am seeking some help locating Usenet archives for research purposes - and
in the long run, in a Internet digital heritage perspective. I am working
on the French newsgroups (from 1993 on) but also interested in any Usenet
archival projects for research or heritage purposes.

Maybe the list can help me with the following :

1/ The Google Groups archives, as everyone probably knows, is very
difficult to search, especially since they changed their interface. I would
like to talk with someone at Google about their Usenet archive, but I find
no possibility of reaching them via online forms. Could someone recommend a
contact ?

2/ Can anyone recommend papers on the topic of Usenet from an archival
perspective (rsearch or heritage) ? I have looked into the AIR-L list
archives and have found an essay by Ronda Hauben, but it did not stirr any
discussion at the time.

3/ I already know of the UTZOO archives on the Internet Archive. Has
anybody exploited these archives ? Does anyone knows of Usenet archive
initiatives other than Google's and the Internet Archive's UTZOO ?

4/ Finally, I would be interested to talk with people who have constituted
a Usenet corpus and preserved it.

Thank you very much in advance !

Camille Paloque-Berges

ps : for private messages, please answer at camille.paloque_berges at cnam.fr,
thanks !

--
*Post-doctoral reseacher at LabEx Hastec (Histoire et Anthropologie des
Savoirs, Techniques et Croyances)
*PRES Hautes Études-Sorbonne-Arts et Métiers (HeSam)
*Associate researcher at CNAM (laboratoire Dicen-IDF), Paris, France
*http://camillepaloqueberges.wordpress.com
*06 28 32 63 05