Tuesday 12 June 2012

Posterity

Those of you who write probably have cuttings albums or scrap books, both of your own work and its reviews. I wonder what you do now that one can't always cut out and stick in a physical copy? As for the shelf of books with my  name on the spine, how does one add e-books to that? Perhaps I am unusually vain even to have, let alone to get pleasure out of the sight of  shelves containing books by me; and it could be that those who have been journalists all their lives never took the trouble to save  the printed versions of their work.

I do. There are cuttings albums for the weekly columns, think pieces, travel writing and book reviews. (Pieces other people have written about me are not stuck in an album but shoved into a box and not looked at again .)  So my question is about online journalism. Today for example, the tribute site to Reginald Hill set up by  Rhian Davies and Margot Kinberg published a piece by me: http://crimewritingmonth2012.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/book-review-and-tribute-the-woodcutter/#comments

Last week the online book review site, Bookoxygen, used my review of a brilliant novel Kingdom of Strangers by  Zoe Ferraris. http://bookoxygen.com/?p=1542

And then there are the e-books - two so far, Telling Only  Lies and A Private Inquiry.

Do other people value such intangible  assets? And if so, how do they look after them?

 

2 comments:

  1. The British Library does a lot of work in the area of digital archiving, both of the work itself and of the life of the writer, eg their emails, etc. I've been to some fascinating talks there about it, and been made to see a large number of challenges that they need to face (obsolescence of format, permissions/privacy, etc).

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  2. Hullo Maxine, thanks for your input. You've reminded me about the BL's digital archiving work, which I knew a little about - obviously an increasingly important subject. And no doubt some so-far unimagined gadgetry will provide a domestic equivalent. Meanwhile, however, gloating over a memory stick or a computer printout doesn't quite equal holding a book or newspaper cutting in one's hand! As for emails, I still make a hard copy of those I want to keep. Primitive or what! All best wishes, Jessica.

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