In her “On Doing Local History” column in the winter issue of the American Association for State and Local History’s History News, Carol Kammen notes that “we are in the midst of an explosion of personal commentary” through the blogosphere. Just as journals and diaries once recorded people’s daily lives, blogs comment on everyday, local, and national events. Kammen challenges local historical societies to take steps to preserve this valuable material for future researchers. Kammen notes that “under copyright law there is not yet an explicit exemption that would allow institutions to preserve blogs for scholarly use”; there are also challenges to preserving and cataloging this prolific and ephemeral resource. The article is not available online, but back issues of the magazine can be purchased at http://www.aaslh.org.

Carol Kammen, “To Blog, or Not to Blog,” History News (62, Winter 2007), pp. 3–4

This post first appeared on AHA Today.