Social Archivist

A document of my process for putting together a physical yearbook for my family for 2009:

Firstly an audit of some of what we have got to organize:

• 1272 iphoto photos + 86 cellphone photos
• 381 Facebook status updates Rachel (we automatically bring in our Tweets but I have deleted some Tweets from my Facebook timeline – not sure if I will add these back in using an export from Twitter and I add quite a few directly into Facebook)
• 531 Facebook status updates Regan
• 47 Facebook status updates Eli
• 4 blog posts on Eli’s (private) baby blog
• 38 blog posts on cre8d and ?? blog posts on Throng – not sure how many (if any) of these belong in a family yearbook?

Other possible elements:

• Favourite memories/moments
• Favourite websites
• Favourite songs
• Numerous videos – stills could be taken from these?
• TripIt itineries
• Movies watched at the cinema (only 2 given that we have a baby!)
• TV series we watched
• Amazon purchases
• 2 Google calendars
• 2 Remember the Milk accounts

Is there anything else I should think to include in a physical yearbook form?

Currently there seems to be surprisingly few books related to the topic of social archiving. The closest I could find was Indie Publishing: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book (2008). My copy recently arrived from Amazon and the book has some excellent tips and some beautiful self-publishing examples.

The most useful parts of the book include short solid design advice (e.g. typography, page layouts) and a nice overview of the entire process of publishing a book – even helpfully explaining all the various mundane parts of the copyright sections in a book. Nothing is covered in-depth (there’s merely a double page spread on InDesign) but it’s a good starting point.

However, there is little specifically relating to how to organize and usefully, beautifully present the type of content we’re all amassing online. I think that this is the biggest issue: how does one present hundreds of photos, tweets, Facebook comments, blog posts, favourite things, events and more in a print format that we will be able to treasure and reminisce over in years to come?

If you have any book suggestions on this topic, please let me know!

The Telegraph has written a fascinating article entitled 50 things that are being killed by the internet with much food for thought.

Three from their list particularly relate to the topic of this blog:

12) Letter writing/pen pals
Email is quicker, cheaper and more convenient; receiving a handwritten letter from a friend has become a rare, even nostalgic, pleasure. As a result, formal valedictions like “Yours faithfully” are being replaced by “Best” and “Thanks”.

13) Memory
When almost any fact, no matter how obscure, can be dug up within seconds through Google and Wikipedia, there is less value attached to the “mere” storage and retrieval of knowledge. What becomes important is how you use it – the internet age rewards creativity.

15) Photo albums and slide shows
Facebook, Flickr and printing sites like Snapfish are how we share our photos. Earlier this year Kodak announced that it was discontinuing its Kodachrome slide film because of lack of demand.

Good food for thought:

“Is the Age of immediacy diminishing the value of history? Has our quest for the new replaced our sense of life as a journey?”
- Carole Guevin