Longtime blogger at PressThink, media critic, and journalism academic, Jay Rosen announced this week he has started his own Internet archive. I say all things Jay, as he is archiving everything you can find online by him or on him by clicking on it.
Currently the Archive holds 26,615 “records” that reach back to 1986, which is when he finished his PhD dissertation.
What’s a record?
“It’s an umbrella term for any individual work in the Archive: typically that would mean an essay or blog post of mine, but it could also be a published interview, an appearance on TV, a thread I composed at Twitter or BlueSky, or a participant in a panel discussion that’s on YouTube, and so on. Again: Everything of mine you can find online.
To count as an item in the Archive it must have a web address of its own because the archive does not acquire anything. It deals in links only, and sends you to them.”
I’m all in as I have 10 blog posts on or referencing Jay, his work or his views dating back to 2004. It would be an honor to be included in the “record” of Jay Rosen.
My blog has been as much a learning and teaching experience for me as anything, and Jay taught me a lot, which I in turn shared with my readers. I had the pleasure of meeting Jay at a conference where we each spoke, when I substituted for Shel Israel.
Jay’s archive doesn’t hold anything but links. To count, it must have a web address of its own. Dealing in only links, not copy, it sends you to the “linked copy.” Jay’s straightforward about the link rot problem. URL’s that change, sites that are taken down etc. will shrink the archive and Jay’s presence over time. But his mark will be preserved more than most.
Why the Archive? From Jay:
“I retired from NYU a year ago, and turned 70 a month ago. That’s part of it. A bigger factor is this. I wanted to point to as much as I could in hopes that some of it will still be there when the next crisis hits.”
How does what Jay is doing compare to what we’re doing at the Library at LexBlog? That was the first question I asked when Bob Ambrogi asked me if I had seen what Jay was doing.
The impulse is close to the same. A 70-year-old who spent decades publishing on the web, looking at a body of work and realizing nobody is going to preserve it unless someone builds an archive.
The architecture, purpose, and magnitude are where we diverge, and Jay acknowledges his archive is a concept. The Library is archiving the digital publishing of legal professionals for preservation and structure to serve as citable secondary law. The purpose is to provide access to justice and the law for the public and the legal profession.
We’re up to 73,000 authors, 1.1 million published works and 4,400 publications – not boasting but that is a lot of copy to hold for citation, versus link out to. Each author has an Author Record “card” and each published work, all vectorized so as to ride on the back of library.lexblog.com for purposes of a citation that won’t go away with link rot.
But Jay’s idea is a great one, a legacy that can stand the test of time. The last 30-plus years for me, and 40 for Jay, riding the publishing and network of the net have been an incredibly enjoyable one. Views shared and criticism received, aplenty. Not everyone chose to enjoy it but those who did should have the opportunity to leave a legacy.
Imagine if everyone was still running comments, Jay. That’s where what we said was really tossed around.