[ih] Archive of internet-history email (and others)

[Brian E Carpenter]

Bill's message was very interesting. But I've curtailed it below, to comment on one point.

On 09-Mar-25 07:33, Bill Ricker via Internet-history wrote:
> *1. Planning and Execution*

A few years ago I went through all the office files of a deceased colleague, and deposited the material with some level of historical interest in three different museums. Currently I'm the guardian of one heavy box of files from another deceased colleague that I have to advise their family about - there's a good chance that it's partly of museum quality too. Having also done archive research myself, I feel entitled to make the following statement: both of those colleagues kept too much stuff.

So I would suggest that anyone who has paper archives either prunes them vigorously or (perhaps better) makes a *very* detailed list of contents. Otherwise, future users of the archives will very likely fail to find the important bits.

Of course pruning an archive is a matter of judgment, but an archive of paper that's 90% dross is a problem in itself.

(The same problem exists for electronic archives, but at least there we can imagine searches being automated in a way that's impossible for paper and rather unreliable for scanned and OCR'ed paper.)

Regards
    Brian Carpenter