Blogs as part of UK’s Intellectual Heritage

This is a cross-post from my communications and social media blog ZenGuide.

The British Library is building a collection of blogs. This collection will form part of the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) initiative to archive websites of research interest. The archiving of blogs is part of a wider project to archive UK websites for future generations. The UKWAC website explains:

For many, the web has become the information source of first resort. From keeping abreast of latest news and accessing online journals and datasets, through to finding information about travel and sport, the web has become the information tool of choice.

However, despite our apparent dependence on this medium very little attention has been paid to the long-term preservation of websites. Indeed, with the life of an average website estimated to be around 44 days (about the same lifespan as a housefly) there is a danger that invaluable scholarly, cultural and scientific resources will be lost to future generations.

To address this problem, a consortium of six leading UK institutions is working collaboratively on a project to develop a test-bed for selective archiving of UK websites.

The six institutions are The British Library as lead partner, The National Archives, The National Library of Wales, JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), The Wellcome Trust and The National Library of Scotland. The project began in June 2004 - a news report from ZDNet at the time wrote: “Each member of the consortium will choose content relevant to its subject. All types of Web content will be included, from government documents to blogs.”

To me, this is a clear indicator that blogs are now moving into their prime. From the public perception of their being the personal journals of misfit geeks or kids a few years ago, blogs have come a long way in a very short period of time. They have evolved into business communications used by an increasing number of top notch businesses as well as by solo professionals and small enterprises - including GlaxoSmithKline (Alliconnect blog), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ BTW blog) and Avis (We Try Harder blog). And now, they are being taken seriously by researchers, academics, scientists and the guardians of the UK’s intellectual heritage.

I wonder if it’s only a question of time now before blogs and other social media are studied at university level as art forms in their own right? After all, these days you can take degrees in English Literature, Film Studies, Photography, Visual Arts, Design etc - considered by previous generations as not sufficiently serious to be subjects of study. When the first novel appeared two hundred years ago, it was greeted with derision and even horror by the intellectuals of the day who viewed poetry - and in particular classical poetry - as the greatest form of literature. Look at things now, with the novelists now the literary heavyweights and poets, sadly, much less high-profile. So, who knows, we may soon be able to apply to study an MA in Blogging…?

Disclosure: I am also delighted to say that I was recently invited to submit my writing and culture blog Fusion View for archiving as part of this project. The email from the British Library’s Web Archivist said: “We would like to invite you to have your site included in this important collection for Internet research. We will be selecting some 150 key sites to form the basis of the blog’s collection until August 2007 but archiving will continue into the future.”

Photo: of the British Library Reading Room thanks to imagesonline.bl.uk