Last week the Library of Congress announced that it would archive all public tweets (Twitter messages). This led to some speculation about why in the world anyone would want to archive the ramblings of people on Twitter — in other words, who cares that I got a new gizmo, or that I liked last night’s episode of Lost? Well, today I bring you #Posterity, a great Slate article addressing this question — author Christopher Beam talks to historians and details what makes this archive useful. Here’s a snippet:
The question is, does the preservation of digital content, from tweets to Facebook updates to blog comments, make the job of historians easier or harder?
The answer is: both. On the one hand, there’s more useful information for historians to sift. On the other, there’s more useless information. And without the benefit of hindsight, it’s impossible to tell which is which. It’s like what John Wanamaker supposedly said about advertising: He knew half of it was wasted, he just didn’t know which half.
The trick will be organization. Hashtags—the # symbols people use to create discussion threads, such as #ashtag for the Iceland volcano cloud and #snowpocalypse for the February snowstorm that swept Washington, D.C.—are a start. …
… Whether historians can make sense of this data depends on the tools they have to sort through it. “This is what historians have always done: they create order out of chaos,” says Martha Anderson, the director of the LOC’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. “It’s kind of like saying, ‘Are newspapers useful for historians?’” says Elaine Tyler May, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin and president of the Organization of American Historians. “We know that they are, but you have to know what you’re looking for.”
Read the rest for an insightful look at why your tweets actually have historical relevance. You can also follow me on Twitter if you want to know what I had for breakfast.
(Via historian Greg Shine’s Twitter feed.) Photo of the LOC Reading Room by Wikipedia user Raul654.
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The Twitter archives are just the logical modern extension of the value we derived from Pepys’ diaries. Will they be as useful? I don’t know. Part of the value of the diaries is that they are a nearly unique window into that place and time. Whereas I think that any future that can decode the Twitter archive will likely also be able to reference the rest of our vast media record. But, as they say, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it….
posted by Lugh on 4-21-2010 at 1:51 pm
Very interesting article.
posted by Chelsea on 4-21-2010 at 2:13 pm
I wonder how many times people laughed at the person who first proposed this. I wonder why that person thought of it in the first place. I haven’t read anything else about this, so it’s very likely that these questions have already been answered.
posted by Shash on 4-21-2010 at 2:40 pm
I think this will be most helpful when you consider the “people on the ground” reports we were getting during events like those that followed the Iran elections. Those stories of what was happening, without the veil of government controlled media to prevent the word from getting out, will be vital to future historians understanding of what really happened. Imagine if we’d had Tweets from Tienanmen Square in 1989 or New York City on 9/11/01. The confusion, the disinformation, the rumors that were flying wildly, these are all a part of the event that will be a great resource for future researchers.
posted by SpaceMonkeyX on 4-21-2010 at 3:00 pm
I’m an Historian. My biggest beef is that for my time period of interest, there are no ‘real people’ voices. I either get a very elite point of view or I get not-always-reliable family stories.
It is true that you have to know *what* you are looking for in historic records. There is a lot of crap on Twitter, but I think I’d rather sort through more crap and get the occasional laugh than not have much of anything to go on.
posted by Laura. on 4-21-2010 at 5:23 pm
All the more reason I am glad I do not Twit.
-”BB”-
posted by Bicycle Bill on 4-21-2010 at 7:38 pm
I think it would be very difficult to search through, but it could be very interesting to future researchers. The personal perspective could be very cool, especially for people researching their own family history. I’m imagining how cool it would be to be able to peruse your great great grandmother’s tweets. It would be awesome. Instead of just the fairly dry history most of us get when we’re researching our family tree from things like census records and birth and death and property records, people could get a much more personal and warm picture of their ancestor’s lives.
posted by Melissa on 4-22-2010 at 12:07 pm