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British Library to archive intellectuals' emails
And maybe IMs one day too...

By Jo Best

Published: Tuesday 19 October 2004

The British Library has started adding emails and electronic data to the list of documents it now archives.

As well as the millions of books and paper correspondence the library holds, digital documents will now start making their way into the library's storage, with scientific workings-out and authors' musings to appear into the library's annals.

Dr Jeremy John, the British Library's curator of digital manuscripts, said the move to keep hold of emails and electronic documents was "a natural progression" from manuscripts. While the library, which holds papers including Leonardo Da Vinci's notebook and the Magna Carta, will be adding to its digital archive substantially in the future, it's not just looking for the big names.

"We're looking for the work of influential people, not always well-known people," John said. "We need to learn to respect ancestral floppy disks as we do fragile historical paper manuscripts." The library now holds, for example, a body of work from pioneering evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton.

The digital archive will initially be made available over a standalone computer in one of the library's reading rooms but John said he hoped eventually the public would be able to check the documents over a network.

And, as it would for physical documents, the British Library has procedures to check the authenticity of its digital archive and measures to stop the documents becoming corrupted.

Multiple copies of the files are made in various formats - even going as far as to use different batches of CDs to prevent corruption. The British Library also makes use of file compression techniques yield unique identifiers and "rigorous audit trails" that record what happens to the files over the decades.

While John doesn't foresee an entirely digital future, with authors and scientists written work dying out, he does see a move to more electronic archiving, adding that he expects the British Library to catalogue IM conversations in the none too distant future.

silicon.com readers can help the project with shifting some of its vintage data onto modern media.

John would like people to contact him if they "have or are aware of available computer hardware, including disk drives and tape readers, software or manuals from the 1960s to the 1980s and possibly early 1990s. I am particularly interested in scientific programs, software, manuals and specialised hardware, and I would like to hear from scientists who have some experience with these kinds of materials as well as classic and vintage computer enthusiasts." 

To contact Dr Jeremy John, click here.