Want to preserve your emails for posterity?

Want to preserve your emails for posterity?

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• March 31st, 2008

I read in smh this morning that The Powerhouse Museum is creating Australia’s first public email archive in an attempt to preserve a collection of present day communications for future generations.

Anyone can contribute by going to the Email Australia site and submitting emails which are funny, sad, embarassing etc etc.

Having just made the change to a new laptop, and whimped out on this opportunity to declare true email bankruptcy, preservation of email is on my mind. Of course, I understand the need to preserve business communications, but dearer to my heart, and harder to let go, is all the ephemera I store in a folder simply called “People”. It’s rare (though not unknown) for me to to sit there and flick through all the funny, sad, embarassing emails my friends have sent me over the years. But still, just like that box of old letters at the back of my wardrobe, I cannot embrace the lightness of letting it go.

And then, I wonder, if this archive was to be preserved in some way, what will it tell of my milieu? An example, expletives deleted:

Hi love,

… only just got around to watching the barnsey clip… *&^%… he was hot.

Trust you’re busy wif the conference looming & all… shall we get together for a cold one once it’s all over?

b x.

With that in mind, get along to Email Australia and make your contribution to our online cultural heritage.

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