THE National Library of Scotland is to create an archive of the blogs, journals and e-mails of leading Scots, which curators claim are the manuscripts of the 21st century, writes Karin Goodwin.

The scheme, which has been awarded £1.8m by the Scottish executive, will be launched over the next two years. The library’s “digital repository” is expected to quickly outstrip its physical collection of books and papers.

The websites and blogs of leading cultural figures, including writers such as JK Rowling and Alasdair Gray, will become prime exhibits.

Digital curators will also save digital source material such as personal e-mails, which they believe will be used as primary research material by academics and biographers.

Simon Bains, the digital library manager of the National Library of Scotland (NLS), said: “We won’t be preserving everything. We’ll select what appears to be of cultural significance from online journals, websites, blogs and e-mails.

“We’ll be harvesting the work of prominent cultural figures but also other interesting social history documents.”

Ian Rankin, the Edinburgh-based crime writer who posts regular updates on his website, claimed he kept back-ups of early manuscripts he could one day donate to the NLS.

Rodge Glass, the Glasgow writer and biographer of Gray, who launched his own blog last year, said there was an increasing need to collect digital material. “Alasdair and I conduct a lot of our correspondence by e-mail,” he said. “We should definitely be collecting this sort of stuff.”

In 2004, the British Library was one of the first institutions in the world to start a digital repository on behalf of several UK institutions. The NLS is the first of those to go it alone.

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