
Does Anyone Collect Old Emails? - mooreds
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/memory-collections.html
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theNJR
I’m the “historian” of the family. I capture vacations, edit recap videos, and
have online and offline back ups of it all. Soon I’ll begin digitizing our old
scrap books so they too can be persevered. As of now I have a meaningful photo
collection that goes back to 2002. Apple Photo does a nice job showing these
to me in memories.

I had saved dozens of voicemails from my family as to persevere their voices,
knowing one day I’d never hear them again. Sadly, I didn’t save them locally
and so they are now gone.

Emails I can still get to, archived in the gmail account I continue to use
today. But one day, that account may go the way of Thisbe voicemails. It
“feels” preserved but I have no true backup. And unlike a letter that you read
and think “yep, this will be meaningful to me one day” so you save it, I’ve
never actively saved a special email.

Ditto to digital plane and concert tickets.

I’d be curious what people here on HN do for digital scrapbooking. I’m sure
there is a better way.

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ktpsns
My father passed away last year, and I have every single email ever written to
him or from him. That's only thanks to being the "computer guy" in the family
and a chaotic number of overlapping backups (in time). It's an invaluable
treasure.

Nowadays, with Gmail and people collecting their data on their own, that's not
an issue. But many of the old "non native digital" generation didn't preserve
data at all.

