Water flows on

Writing Diary With Water.

How green are our online services?

The Museums Computer Group's JISCmail list had an interesting thread yesterday discussing the environmental impact and sustainability of museums' online services. Matthew Cock of the British Museum started it off with this question:

I was thinking about how a museum might make its activities more sustainable, in terms of reducing its carbon footprint, etc. And then I got to thinking about the museum's website (as is my job) and the internet in general. On a large scale, how much energy does the internet use up? Is anyone aware of any figures? On a local scale, we could evaluate the energy used up by the servers hosting our site, and the PCs and infrastructure inside our Museum. But how far could we decrease these (I'm not going to even mention 'off-setting' as an option), even as we aim to increase our site visits, and ensure good bandwidth and zero downtime? We increasingly demand that our websites are accessible, and require of 3rd parties that they help us to achieve that - is there a place for requirements that our ISPs use renewable sources of energy?

All the servers we're using require lots of power to run and to keep them cool. Is that offset by the trips we save people making by putting lots of the information they need online? I wasn't sure about this comment from Nick Poole though:

If we are talking about the environmental impact specifically of digital publishing by museums, then I would argue that this is offset by several orders of magnitude by the mostly tedious and tangential blogosphere. If we're talking about personal choices, preventing unnecessary blogging would probably be up there at number one on my list.

Oh dear. Should we shut this blog down?

Inquire Within Upon Everything

I recently watched an episode of the Imagine... TV programme presented by Alan Yentob on the rise of the World Wide Web. One snippet that particularly delighted me was the reference to a Victorian book called 'Inquire Within Upon Everything'. This is a compendium of advice on every conceivable subject, from alleviating aches and pains to social etiquette. It was the initial inspiration for Tim-Berners Lee when he was developing the software program that was the precursor to the Web - he named it 'Inquire' in homage to the book. I like the idea that the World Wide Web was inspired by an obscure Victorian book. It gives a kind of sense of the continuation and spread of the world's knowledge from a little-known book to the world wide scale of the Internet. On a completely different note, I was chatting to Brian Kelly of UKOLN about the wonders of RSS and blogging. However, we agreed that setting up RSS feeds may not be for everyone. You now have an alternative - you can sign up to an RSS email service so that you receive regular emails instead of RSS feeds - read more about this on Brian's blog - I believe that he's testing a few out...

Henry Blogg

Coxswain Henry Blogg (1876-1954) was the RNLI's most decorated lifeboatman. As well as RNLI medals for gallantry, he was awarded the George Cross and British Empire Medal. In 53 years of service, Henry Blogg and his crew helped to save 873 lives. There is now an RNLI Henry Blogg Museum in Cromer, Norfolk.

Blog for history

The History Matters campaign is organising a mass "One Day in History" blog in the UK on 17 October 2006. The entries submitted will be kept as part of the British Library's web archive. It's an internet-enabled version of the ideas behind the Mass-Observation movement. From the site:

...a society out of touch with its past cannot have confidence in its future. History helps us to know where we come from and to explain the world as it is.

But one post in the site's forum does point out that there is a distinct lack of mention of archives on the site, and apparent lack of involvement of archive-related organisations:

Sadly, it seems that they have been largely overlooked even by campaigners dedicated to promoting history and heritage.