NARA Wants US Government Social Media Content Tamed
October 26, 2010
If you are a firm believer in records management nuclear power plants and aircraft, you may find “NARA: Federal Social Media Requires Archiving Attention” interesting. NARA is shorthand for the National Archives. For more information about NARA, navigate to www.archives.gov. The idea is that the tweets, Facebook wall posts, and other social content should be archived. There is a bulletin that explains what social content should be archived. But the interesting item in the write up is a flow chart to help the Federal professional figure out what to do with social, webby two oh content.
If you can’t read the text, click here for the big version.
Social content is like lots of still living anchovies. The content is often small and slippery. Out of context social content can, like fish, become pretty interesting unless preserved promptly and with considerable care.
My hunch is that figuring out how to suck content from cloud services, organize it, and make it findable is a pretty challenging task. My earlier reference to the records management work for nuclear power plants and aircraft was not an idle reference. The complexity of US government social content may be as complex and costly.
Stephen E Arnold, October 26, 2010