Introduction to the Study

Old methods of communicating, like writing letters and keeping journals, have greatly diminished due to the prolific use of electronic mediums. Instead, web-based emails and blogs are prevalent. Personal documents (letters, journals, or other formal/informal documents) are precious materials for the future use to observe the era in which individuals lived. However, how many people realize that electronic letters and blogs could be vulnerable in the hands of today's service providers, not the creators'?

Imagine: what if a researcher from 200 years in the future choose to study the life and works of a famous writer from 2008 but all of his/her letters, journals and even published works were stored on the web in the form of emails or blogs and there is no way to retrieve or restore old web data 200 years hence?

The objective of this research project is two fold: (1) to examine how the general public uses commercially provided web emails and blogs to keep their personal documents and history, and (2) to determine what roles information professionals need to play in assisting the general public to archive their data so it is not lost to future generations and historians.

We appreciate greatly your input in the following study. The survey contains 36 questions and will take about 10 to 20 minutes to finish. While answering the questions to the best of your ability, please keep the following points in mind:

  1. The term of "personal historical data(information)" was used in this survey to broadly indicate any information or data that would be fundamental sources for the "history" of a person. (Such as letters, emails, journals, documents, itineraries, publications, arts and so forth.)
  2. Web service providers for emails and blogs indicate "Yahoo," "MSN," "Gmail," "Blogger," "Flickr," or similar web sites that you are using for your email(s) or blog(s) without any cost.
  3. When we say, "using a blog," we mean that you have your own blog site to manage and you are the actual publisher.
  4. You can always skip questions, if you don't have an answer. It is not necessary to fill each question in order to proceed to the next one.

Thank you very much. We wish you also enjoy the questions in this survey!!

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