once-a-polecat:

So, Octavia Butler willed her “papers” to the Huntington. But she lived past the time of email correspondence, so the exhibit contained some email printouts. Which made me wonder, these days if a notable person wills their “papers” somewhere, does that include email correspondence and computer drafts of speeches or manuscripts? How is all that stuff retrieved? What about old computers that are no longer in use?

Please, reblog this guys… I want to reach some librarians on this because I’m super curious.

Great question! This is one of the biggest challenges in libraries like ours right now. 21st century authors write with computers, and we want to preserve those records and make them available to researchers just as we always have done with records on paper. That’s why when we recently acquired author Jamaica Kincaid’s “papers” we acquired her laptops as well (above). Future generations wouldn’t be able to study her life and writing without the crucial primary evidence.