We pointed at the South By South-West (SXSW) panel on Digital Preservation and Blogs earlier; now there are some reports here, here, and here.
Some of the things that were discussed: does form count? (Should we save stylesheets?) What about blogs where the owners change their entries? Is it necessary to save everything?
If we do not save everything, who is to know what may be missed:
I think it was intellectual historian Josh Greenberg who asked about the personal history of president of the United States in 2040. She certainly will have had a had a rich social life centered around text messaging and email. She may have had a blog or have been influenced by a blogger. She will have participated in online communities like myspace or flickr. When she completes her second term in office, will her personal digital collection have survived? How will her presidential librarian collect the documentation of her early life? What primary source materials will her biographer use to uncover the story of her coming of age?
Re: bloggers changing their entries; I was reminded of a note on my personal blog where I wonder what a good system for book reviews would be. Currently there are three or four sites I read that take book reviews, but posting to three or four separate websites, each with their own rules and peculiarities (and log-ins!) does not appeal to me. Also, if I wanted to fix a typo I would have to revisit all these sites (assuming they allow typos to be fixed).
My current work-around: post to my personal weblog and use tags such as “book” and “review”.
