This fetishisation of information access imagines people in a vacuum, as if the only thing standing between them and a future of flourishing is whether data is open and accessible. However, access to a life immersed in knowledge-seeking isn’t just about whether information is free, it’s also about whether people are free from the constant demands of securing their basic material needs. - The Boy’s Own Internet, Reboot
Publicly accessible but morally and/or legally inaccessible data. People not knowing their data is being collected. People not consenting to their data being collected. Personally identifying information being collected.
Without consent aka without knowledge often on the Internet
”lost arts”, The Lost Art Gallery, Lost Art Database knowledge lost and gained by being online family recipes, personal histories, things lost in the maelstrom of information we have online now does all knowledge need to be saved? what do we lose by keeping things that aren’t of note? archiving? digitisation digital preservation archival value/appraisal: so many procedures for deciding. collection management policy. Building a Living, Breathing Archive: A Review of Appraisal Theories and Approaches for Web Archives
i guess it would be more of a disaster knowledge wise if the entire British Library or Bodeleian burnt to the ground. I doubt it’s volume over all other considerations though? Does the quality of resource not figure into it? Apparently the Bodeleian only has to have a copy of every British book so less important than I thought, but the British library is one of the largest in the world so i stand by that.
Why am i so fixated on quality? I think finding a genuine shopping list or receipt from long enough ago would be an amazing and humbling find, you never know what will be interesting to future humans. quality/value turns out to be an important quality to archives so i take it back!
I think that the budget for the British library being comparatively low to both tech and other smaller library budgets is wild. I would never trust a corporation to do a library’s job but I do think it’s wild how little we invest into these places.