British Library starts email archive

The British Library has started a campaign to collect the emails of Britons for a digital archive.

As part of a month-long campaign, the British Library is asking UK residents to send in an important email they have received today. The communications will be stored in a digital archive in the library as a snapshot of British society in 2007.

John Tuck, head of British collections at the British Library, said: "Email has, in many respects, replaced traditional forms of communications such as letters or memoranda, thousands of examples of which we have at the British Library.

"Email Britain will allow us to archive a vast snapshot of our present-day email communications and will be of great value for future researchers.

"Digital archiving of email has never been attempted before on this scale and we are very excited to be capturing such a rich slice of contemporary life."

The emails will be classified under 'blunders', 'life changing emails', 'complaints', 'spam', 'love and romance', 'humour', 'everyday emails', 'news', 'world around you' and 'tales from abroad'.

Examples should be sent to email@emailbritain.co.uk or users can register at the Email Britain website.

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