from The New York Times -
British Library, You’ve Got Mail, and It’s Not Spam
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Another effort at digital preservation and this time using the unique medium of e-mail to document a sample of "everyday" (and some might say "mundane") life. The larger objective of the entire exercise being to build "the first archive of its kind" as a sort of "electronic time capsule".

"The British Library is famous for its collections of 'official history.' What’s great about the collection of e-mail messages is that it’s a 'democratic resource' that shows how people really lived."

The claim that this collection of messages are somehow representative is perhaps a result of wishful thinking. It would be more accurate to qualify that it "shows how people with access to e-mails really lived" in a world where only 12% have access to a computer.
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