[Taxacom] Obscure web site

Fri Aug 17 12:51:17 CDT 2012

I still have an electronic copy of every email I have ever written (and all
of the substantive ones I have received) since 1994 Before that it was on
Compuserve, and I don't think I can still access those emails anymore.  The
only exception is a 4-month window of my digital life in 2004 that was lost
when the ONE time that my laptop, backup disks, and my archival backups of
the backups were all physically together, happened to coincide with the
night that my house was robbed.

I have copies of many of the paper letters I wrote prior to that; but there
are much harder to search and access than the electronic correspondence is.

Aloha,
Rich

P.S. To address the snarky comments that will undoubtedly come from Jim
Croft, Neal Evenhuis, and others -- the answer is about 20GB. My laptop has
3TB (~3000GB) of storage space, so it's not a big deal.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Heike Vibrans
> Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 5:57 AM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Cc: Richard Zander
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Obscure web site
>
> Yes, a good observation, that.
>
> There are some programs that allow you to store your e-mails on your hard
> drive (and back them up them elsewhere), apart from Outlook. I use one
> that is called Mailstore (free, you can store up to three e-mail address
> contents and update whenever you want). You can call up individual e-mails
> and print them; it stores the attachments as well. It's a good idea,
anyway, as
> e-mail servers can crash, virus may get in and e-mails often have legal
> implications - I prefer to have my correspondence with funding
institutions,
> superiors, students, banks etc. stored in a place that cannot be easily
> corrupted or disappeared. But if that helps historians, quién sabe.
>
> Regards,
> Heike
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dra. Heike Vibrans Lindemann
> Laboratorio de Etnobotánica
> Postgrado en Botánica
> Campus Montecillo
> Colegio de Postgraduados en Ciencias Agrícolas km 35.5 carr.
México-Texcoco
> 56230 Montecillo
> Estado de México, Mexico
>
> Tel. +52 (595) 95 20 200 Ext. 1335
> Fax. +52 (595) 95 20 247
> Correo electrónico: heike at colpos.mx (trabajo),
> heike_texcoco at yahoo.com.mx
>
> Páginas web:
> http://www.malezasdemexico.net
> http://www.colpos.mx/IRENAT/bot/HeikeVibransLindemann.htm
> Blogs:
> http://jehuite.blogspot.com
> http://www.cuexcomate.com
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> --- El vie 17-ago-12, Richard Zander <Richard.Zander at mobot.org> escribió:
>
> > De: Richard Zander <Richard.Zander at mobot.org>
> > Asunto: Re: [Taxacom] Obscure web site
> > A: "John Grehan" <calabar.john at gmail.com>, "Dr Brian Taylor"
> > <dr.brian.taylor at ntlworld.com>
> > Cc: "taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Robert Kiger"
> > <rkiger at andrew.cmu.edu>
> > Fecha: viernes, 17 de agosto de 2012, 10:28 Interesting thread here.
> > Another problem with digital legacy is email.
> > Will the history of science slam to a halt when it comes to 1990? This
> > is when, I think, people stopped keeping carbon copies of their
> > correspondence and putting snail mail of letters they got into manila
> > folders.
> >
> > I've tried to keep copies of my correspondence but it is just too
> > tedious to save an email as a text file with info on who it was sent
> > to.
> >
> >
> > If there were software that allowed one to archive an email (coming or
> > going) by pressing an "Archive this" key or icon, this would be a boon
> > to the history of science. Saving with xml formats might help data
> > mining. I think this is an important thing, because just think . . .
> > what historian is going to study correspondence between zoologists or
> > botanists or any other scientist between 1990 and 2013?
> > How?
> >
> > The opportunity is there to create software to sell to institutions
> > and individuals a way to archive their email. There are certainly
> > institutions that will accept such archives, e.g. the Hunt Botanical
> > Institute in Pittsburgh for botany.
> >
> > ____________________________
> > Richard H. Zander
> > Missouri Botanical Garden, PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO
> > 63166-0299 USA
> > Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/
> > and
> > http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
> > Modern Evolutionary Systematics Web site:
> > http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/21EvSy.htm
> > UPS and FedExpr -  MBG, 4344 Shaw Blvd, St. Louis 63110 USA
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu]
> > On Behalf Of John Grehan
> > Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 10:15 AM
> > To: Dr Brian Taylor
> > Cc: taxacom
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Obscure web site
> >
> > Brain,
> >
> > The web is definitely and blessing and a curse. The long term
> > viability of the effort seems to remain unresolved, even the
> > scratchpad option has only limited operative potential. In a way I see
> > my website as a sort of book without going to the point of producing a
> > book. A book may represent a 'final' product upon its completion but
> > at least it remains accessible from that point on whereas a web site
> > may be continuously evolving, but from the point that it is no longer
> > supportable its content will effectively die and it's value, even if
> > the content continues to be accessible in some archive, no longer has
> > that currency that even a book may continue to generate.
> >
> > They way I look at this is that as long as I am alive I may be able to
> > cover the cost and at least I am in control of the situation and not
> > subject to arbitrary institutional decisions (its certainly an irony
> > that a supposedly science institution did not appear to value the
> > science of the ant site). In my case I provided my web site
> > information to a couple of other individuals with the instruction that
> > they could continue, restructure, or disassemble the site as they see
> > fit upon my future demise or loss of functionality. I have decided not
> > to worry overmuch about the future of the site as I do not even really
> > understand why I bother maintaining a site anyway. I suppose its is a
> > compulsion of some sort to affect the present, but the real irony is
> > that once we are no longer of this earth everything falls into the
> > hands of those to come.
> >
> > John Grehan
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 3:13 AM, Dr Brian Taylor <
> > dr.brian.taylor at ntlworld.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Dear John,
> > >
> > > Your news raises, perhaps, the apparently neglected
> > question of legacy
> > and
> > > web sites. Whilst institutions devote resources,
> > arguably inadequate,
> > to
> > > the
> > > maintenance of libraries and so preserve the legacy of
> > the printed
> > word,
> > > there seems little evidence that electronic media are
> > regarded as
> > worthy of
> > > support let alone maintenance.
> > >
> > > At the beginning of this year and without any warning
> > to me, the AMNH
> > shut
> > > down my website on the ants of Africa.  Originally
> > fortunately, as an
> > > earlier hosting group had closed due to retirement of
> > the group leader
> > and
> > > transfer of the group to another institution, my site
> > had been hosted
> > by
> > > the
> > > AMNH under the umbrella of Antbase.org for several
> > years.  Due to
> > supposed
> > > concern over copyright content the AMNH shut Antbase
> > and so shut my
> > > website.
> > > No such concerns had been expressed over my site but an
> > appeal to them
> > to
> > > keep the site open with supporting evidence as to its
> > wide useage fell
> > on
> > > deaf ears.  Whilst I could do what you appear to
> > have done and pay my
> > > personal ISP a monthly fee for storage space that does
> > not answer the
> > > legacy
> > > factor, if and when I become unable to keep a personal
> > space open.
> > >
> > > With foresight I had requested the UK Web Archive to
> > include my sites
> > (one
> > > on the Ants of Egypt remains unaffected) in its
> > national archive.
> > Thus the
> > > pre-2012 contents remain preserved but I cannot update
> > that content.
> > >
> > > The archived content can be accessed at
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20101217230047/http://an
> tba
> > se.o
> > > rg/ants/africa/ for those who wonder at the merit of my
> > concern.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > Brian Taylor
> > >
> > >
> > > On 09/08/2012 05:07, "John Grehan" <calabar.john at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > For those few that may be interested, my
> > panbiogeography, human
> > > evolution,
> > > > and ghost moth web pages are now resurrected at
> > http://johngrehan.net/
> > > >
> > > > Due to an unfortunate trend in the US (but not
> > limited to,
> > apparently) I
> > > > lost my institutional resources and had to
> > reestablish my web site
> > on
> > > these
> > > > topics. To date the panbiogeographic and human
> > evolution pages are
> > still
> > > > only cursory, but hopefully time will allow for
> > their future
> > expansion.
> > > > Since few care about the content I wonder why I
> > bother. Must have
> > > something
> > > > to do with my ego. Or something.
> > > >
> > > > John Grehan
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > >
> > > > Taxacom Mailing List
> > > > Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > > > http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
> > > >
> > > > The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be
> > searched with either
> > of
> > > these
> > > > methods:
> > > >
> > > > (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
> > > >
> > > > (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> > > mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom
> > > > your search terms here
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > Taxacom Mailing List
> > Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
> >
> > The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with
> > either of
> > these methods:
> >
> > (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
> >
> > (2) a Google search specified as:
> > site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search
> > terms here
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > Taxacom Mailing List
> > Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
> >
> > The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with
> > either of these methods:
> >
> > (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
> >
> > (2) a Google search specified as:
> > site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search
> > terms here
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
> these methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:
> site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here

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