I received an email from a former native English teacher who is now a Master's student at the University of Glasgow, and who is conducting research for her MSc Information Management & Preservation dissertation:
http://2009msc.wordpress.com. It sounds like an interesting project, so take some time to help her out by filling out the questionnaire.
My dissertation will examine the role of blogs in helping to form and shape a sense of community identity amongst expats living in South Korea. This is being done in order to determine the archival value of these blogs and examine if, and how, they should be preserved.A questionnaire (which doesn't take long to fill out) and more information can be found at
Basically, I believe that today’s archives are rife with personal diaries and papers which allow us a glimpse into the past. But, what of the archives of the future? How many people today actually keep a pen and paper journal or write letters home? More and more native English teachers living in Korea have replaced diaries and letters home with blogs. Furthermore, due to the nature of the native English teacher community in Korea, much of the information about this community can only be found on the Internet on sites such as blogs (like yours). Therefore, a failure to preserve blogs may create a black hole of information for future generations of archives users.
http://2009msc.wordpress.com. It sounds like an interesting project, so take some time to help her out by filling out the questionnaire.
4 comments:
This is awesome! I think since 2000 blogging & working as English teachers in Korea have been inseparable
It might be also useful to consider mailing lists, such as the now defunct Kexpat, that were the Marmot's Hole of their day.
Blogs should also be considered not just as fonts of information, but also as sources of amplification of shared memes. Though not a classic "blog," Dave's ESL forums are vehicles for spreading a message that "the Koreans hate us" and for creating an atmosphere of hating Koreans/Korea back. To some extent, some blogs have done much the same.
While the story / survey is somewhat old (first posted in May!), my guess is that they haven't quite gotten the number of responses that they need to meet the scientific rigors of such a survey.
I think kushibo hit it on the head; to go one step further, it's the history of English teachers in Korea - the trials, triumphes, setbacks, and progress made by the minority group in a foreign country. Taken from a macro setting, it's worth preserving to know the sociological effects and changes; from the micro level, we can see how people are affected by whatever's happening; what they note (or don't note) in their blog. Since I filled out the survey it's made me more conscious about what I blog - not just for today's reading / entertainment, but possibly saved for posterity and 30 years from now.
Actually, I got the email a couple months ago and completely forgot about the survey after saving it until I cleaned off my desktop the other day...
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