Dear Conch-Lers. I am in agreement with Harry.

As an amateur trying to learn a lot in a short time (the rest of my life) with little to spend to buy access to most published papers, I've found these so-called 'temporary' files very useful. Sometimes I find Conchlist replies to inquiries on line when researching for the most basic things. Besides that, the non-scientific community contributes much to those of us who don't have the same education and don't easily understand the jargon, tables, and charts in the published papers.



---- Harry Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

=============
To Marien, Carole, José et al.,

Although I see his point, I disagree with
Marien's conclusions in the two communications
below - especially when one considers his good
works in cyberspace; they're anything but "trivial" and (un)"important."

I do agree with the several other contributors,
that, although certain genres of scientific
communication are best constrained to paper media
(and peer-review), lots of stuff exclusively in
electronic form, e.g. webfeatures, blogs, email
and Conch-L archives, etc., are unique, original,
illuminating, scientifically rigorous, and worthy
of efforts to conserve for posterity.

However, I have had difficulty interesting
institutions which, it seems to me, should find
this part of their mission into perpetuity, to
see it this way. Maybe Jan can expand on the
"mission"  notion vis-Ã -vis electronic media he
introduced earlier in this thread

Harry


At 02:37 PM 10/8/2013, Marien Faber wrote:
>Dear Carole,
>
>if things are just temporary steps towards more
>knowledge (I regard my site and its contents as
>such) then, I believe, there is not much reason
>to preserve them forever. Important, sure, but
>only temporarily. The purpose of my site (and
>probably most sites) is to aid the creation of
>more permanent records, i.e. scientific papers.
>Of course I hope that the information on my site
>will be used before it becomes obsolete, or
>trivial. Some of it is trivial already, but who cares? I don't!
>
>Marien
>
>
>----------
>Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 14:06:07 -0400
>From: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [CONCH-L] Don't want to be morbid but>>>>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Marien, I would not consider the web sites I
>mentioned (and others I didn't) to be
>unimportant. I really hope those of you who do
>this work will seriously consider this thread. I
>do not think it has been mentioned before.
>      Carole
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Marien Faber <[log in to unmask]>
>To: CONCH-L <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tue, Oct 8, 2013 11:49 am
>Subject: Re: [CONCH-L] Don't want to be morbid but>>>>
>
>
>"I depended greatly on his archived ...
>correspondences. In this e-mail era (and
>future), I'm not sure what will be available for
>historians to research the background of
>individuals and history in general." [Charlie Sturm]
>
>This is an interesting point. I have seriously
>considered printing (!) the most important
>emails that I've received &  sent. But what is
>important? Only future generations can tell.
>Probably nothing is important unless you are a
>Vincent van Gogh, Anne Frank, or Albert Einstein.
>
>Marien
>
> > Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 09:19:38 -0400
> > From: <mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: [CONCH-L] Don't want to be morbid but>>>>
> > To: <mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]

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