Literary archives of the future. What will they look like?

0

By Paul Biba

The Guardian is such a wonderful paper. They used to have a weekly international edition that I subscribed to for years. This is from their Books Blog:

… What, I wonder, will the literary histories and biographies of the future look like? Will the great libraries store and catalogue computer disks? Archives are already logging entries for film and video; where once it was essential to be able to read the chancery script of Elizabethan and Jacobean manuscripts, will it now be necessary to have an MA in the decoding of Microsoft Word? A PhD in email correspondence techniques? …

Now, it’s not neglect that threatens the archives of the future, but technology. Today, some novelists still save and print different drafts, but many don’t. Others deliver their work as PDF files, eschewing print and paper altogether. So what will the archives of the 21st century look like, after a generation of word processing?

0

 Print Friendly