While I was preoccupied filing taxes last week, the Library of Congress announced a deal with Twitter. Basically, Twitter will donate all public tweets, past, present, and future, to the LoC for archival purposes. Twitter elaborates:
It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research. […] after a six-month delay can the Tweets be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.
I’d think the publicly funded and lofty Library of Congress would have more meaningful projects to prioritize ahead of rescuing Twitter from their inability to provide more than a few days of searchable tweets (without bringing down the server farm). But what do I know, there’s probably quite a few needles in this pop culture haystack that we’ll reflect on years from now.
I do have a few logistical questions for the parties, though. Not because I’m personally concerned, but to stimulate a dialog as we engage in this new era of open online communication.