You’d think it obvious that my blog should be preserved, though I’m not so sure about yours! According to the poster summarising the fascinating 2007 survey by Carolyn Hank et al: “The majority of bloggers agreed (36%) or strongly agreed (34.9%) that their own blogs should be preserved.” Five per cent don’t want their blogs preserved at all; nearly a quarter aren’t fussed either way.
Here’s one of the data tables (which I had to retype as HTML – Peter Murray Rust is right about PDFs and data):
Table 4. Preservation perceptions – general
Strongly agree or agree Neither agree or (sic) disagree Strongly disagree or disagree Should preserve Personal blog 70.9% 23.8% 5.3% Every blog 35.8% 27.9% 36.3% Every comment 31.4% 31.9% 36.7% All online content 28.2% 22.3% 49.5% Should not preserve Some blogs 44.7% 27.7% 27.7% Some comments 48.4% 31.3% 20.2% Some online content 51.3% 24.9% 23.8%
The overall pattern seems a good vindication of our own project approach, which will progressively move from capturing blog content (posts), to addressing comments and content, reflecting the scale of the bloggers’ own priorities.
It also seems a useful juncture in our project to throw open the question: which blogs should we preserve?
With over 5 million active blogs noted by Technorati, it seems daft to even start to enumerate them but in our field (libraries, archives, information science), several stand out, and it’s the very nature and importance of these that bolster the case for keeping them. I have in mind in particular Peter Suber’s Open Access News blog, but also blogs such as those of Peter Murray Rust, Brian Kelly, Lorcan Dempsey, Dorothea Salo, Jill Walker Rettberg – all ripe with contemporary accounts and robust views on matters of scholarly communication. But in every case, we have cause to wonder: will that information survive, will that link still work tomorrow?
What blogs (or types of blogs) do you think should be preserved, and why?
June 26th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
[...] blog and just have to comment. It’s really important. More of my comments at the bottom…Which blogs should be preserved? Richard M. Davis on 26th June, 2009 at 12:00 pmYou’d think it obvious that my blog should be [...]
July 17th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I’m not sure how you should pick blogs for preserving. But beyond preserving the blogs themselves, I think you should make sure to archive (by yourselves or using a service like webcitation.org) the content at the end of the links they point to.
July 27th, 2009 at 11:53 am
[...] ArchivePress » Blog Archive » Which blogs should be preserved? [...]
June 12th, 2011 at 1:01 am
I’m not sure how you should pick blogs for preserving. But beyond preserving the blogs themselves, I think you should make sure to archive (by yourselves or using a service like webcitation.org the content at the end of the links they point to.