Cliff writes and interesting post about our online identities. The short summary is this - he posted a video for his staff use. He then deleted the account that held the video, only to find out that his video was cited in a paper.
I’ve come across this issue before. I’ve wanted to change my username for StumbleUpon which is different from every other professional account I have - but I know I can’t because so many people are connected to it.
Cliff asks:
- How will we manage our online identities throughout our lifetimes?
- What do we (as librarians and indexers) do about media that is constantly being updated/moved/deleted?
- Where is that darn video?!?
I don’t have an answer to Cliff’s questions - but it does add to the problem of digital preservation we’re all facing.
And how bad is this? I’m trying to decide if it’s worth to start grabbing gmail accounts and perhaps domain names with my kids’ names–and they can’t even read yet!