BlogForever: Intelligent Blog Preservation
A new EU co-funded project, BlogForever, has set its sights on a developing region of the Internet: the blogosphere. With society growing ever more online-oriented, blogs have become rich repositories of cultural, scientific and social information. The BlogForever software platform is designed to manage and distribute this content and preserve it for posterity.
The BlogForever project will gather blog content into a safeguarded, online archive, turning the once temporary into a well-preserved resource. The project is scheduled for completion in 2013, with partners spread across 12 different companies, universities and research organisations, including CERN. While the CERN team is primarily involved in the technical aspect of the project – designing and implementing the repository – it will also contribute to the preservation guidelines that will be used to choose what content will be kept.
“Building on the success of Invenio, the digital library software used by the CERN Document Server, the BlogForever software platform will improve upon our established system,” explains Jean-Yves Le Meur, CDS service manager and BlogForever CERN team leader. “In addition, by archiving high-energy physics blogs we will increase the amount of ‘casual academic’ information at our disposal.” High-energy physics blogs have become a valuable source of information for practising physicists; they are venues for discussion and sharing without the formalities of publication.
As well as acting as a digital archive of blog content, BlogForever will also make the repository searchable. "It is often challenging for users to find and access the blog content they are looking for," explains Nikos Kasioumis, who holds a CERN fellowship and is leading the BlogForever software infrastructure work package. "BlogForever software will focus on making this content accessible after only a few clicks, capturing the dynamic and continuously evolving nature of blogs and their developing social structure.”
Help shape the digital repository: share your blogging experiences by filling out its online survey. “With the help of bloggers and blog readers, we’ll be able to develop a repository that is comprehensive and meets user requirements,” says Le Meur. The survey is available in 6 languages and will be online until 8 August.
