by Molly Jean Schoen

Earlier this month, the Library of Congress announced that it would house every “tweet” ever posted on Twitter. Every 140-character-or-less blurb on the site is now part of the vast LoC archives. This got me thinking: what are the issues at hand in archiving social networking sites? And why is it important?

Recently, while cleaning out my apartment, I found a relic of primitive social networking—a printed-out Facebook message from 2005. Nostalgia instantly struck. Five years ago, Facebook was [thefacebook], with a much simpler interface. A toolbar on the left listed the humble features of the relatively new site: My Profile, My Groups, My Friends, My Away Messages. Clearly, Facebook was trying to emulate MySpace —which was then by far the preferred means of social networking.
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by Karly Szczepkowski

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my father brought home our first computer. It was a Mac. I can’t recall which model it was, but it was an all-in-one box with a screen the size of a small Kleenex box (I only wish I was joking!). Initially I was suspicious of this computer: having been raised on a steady diet of science fiction and comic books, I knew what computers were capable of. But my father convinced me that computers are only as smart as the person who programs them, so I gave in, turned it on, mastered the mouse and became addicted to computer gaming.

There was one game in particular that I liked. I can’t remember what it was called, but I created a group of witches, elves and trolls and we went on adventures: slayed dragons, defeated evil overlords, rescued princesses – that sort of thing. It was like a single-player, kiddie computer version of Dungeons & Dragons. I loved it, but I was also very bad at it. The computer won every time.
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by Kim Schroeder

After teaching so many archival and technology classes, I began to realize the incredible depth and breadth of our loss of data. Over the last three decades billions of discs have been created and sold and presumably used. What has happened to these discs? To the data? If even 5% was worth saving for historical purposes, that is still about one and a half million discs to save and migrate. Has that been done?

We all know that the answer is “no.” So that means that we need to look at what is important and what level of effort is necessary to save it. I know that we can not save everything and I know that we would not want to. As Nik Cubrilovic mentioned in a recent Washington Post article entitled “Letting Data Die a Natural Death”: “Not only is a lot of this data not important, but do we really want to keep it? I certainly would not want a full account of everything I did in my youth sitting on a server somewhere. I am also certain that we do not want the record of our as a society time being documented and discovered by future civilizations based on Twitter messages.”
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by Margie Friant

Archivists have special needs when it comes to choosing a file format for storage. We have all heard of or endured the nightmares of file format obsolescence. There are no guarantees when it comes to file format longevity, but here are some tips to help you choose a file format that stands a chance of still being readable in a few years.
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