This morning I received the following email address from the Library of Congress. I have a great deal of control over the content of this site because it is self-hosted, but what happens after I am no longer around? Well, it looks like interested readers will have permanent access to the content of this site for a very long time and that makes me very happy. I love the idea of this site being saved as a point of entry on how the Civil War was remembered at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in the historic collection of Internet materials related to the American Civil War Sesquicentennial. The Library of Congress preserves the Nation’s cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library’s traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the Congress and the American people to foster education and scholarship, extend to digital materials, including websites.
We request your permission to collect your website and add it to the Library’s research collections. In order to properly archive this URL, and potentially other URLs of interest on your site, we would appreciate your permission to archive both this URL and other portions of your site. With your permission, the Library of Congress or its agent will engage in the collection of content from your website at regular intervals over time and make this collection available to researchers both at Library facilities and, by special arrangement, to scholarly research institutions. In addition, the Library hopes that you share its vision of preserving Internet materials and permitting researchers from across the world to access them.
Our Web Archives are important because they contribute to the historical record, capturing information that could otherwise be lost. With the growing role of the Web as an influential medium, records of historic events could be considered incomplete without materials that were “born digital” and never printed on paper. For more information about these Web Archive collections, please visit our website.
[I will provide more information as it becomes available.]
OK, who did you bribe to get this?
Congratulations!
Kevin,
Absolutely outstanding!
Very happy for you, Kevin, and glad your site will be preserved.
Sincerely,
Neil
Kevin,
You have every reason to be proud of this! Certainly your readers and all those who comment on the interesting, insightful things they find here are proud for you.
Congratulations, Kevin!
Thanks, Robert. This is definitely good news for all of us who work hard to maintain blogs that are informative and entertaining.
Congratulations!! That is way way way cool.
Alan
Pretty cool, indeed. 🙂
Kevin – Congratulations on a most well-deserved honor!
Thanks Paul. I really appreciate it.
I’ve been a lurker for years, and I’m not surprised. The quality of your site is outstanding. I learn something or get food for thought on every day’s visit.
Congratulations!
Thanks so much Mary Ellen. It’s always nice to hear from a first time commenter on these occasions. Thanks for reading.
Congratulations Kevin. Quite an honor! I have an inkling of how proud you must be. My mother’s book of poems, published posthumously, is in the Library of Congress. What can one say but wow. Good for you Kevin!
Thanks so much for the kind words, John.
NICE! What an honor!
Thanks
Congrats!
Thanks, Harry.
Congratulations, Kevin (I’m assuming you conveyed your consent to LOC)! I’m very impressed.
Hi Margaret,
Thanks. I gave my consent this morning. I am quite pleased on a number of levels, but I am humbled by the thought that the LOC believes that my site is important enough to preserve for future generations.
Impressive, and well deserved, Kevin!
Thanks Bob.
Fantastic news Kevin…congrats!
Thanks Corey.
JEB is very proud of you…and woudn’t mind an honorable mentioning; )
Keep in mind that I’ve written about “the boys” on occasion, which means that they will be archived as well. 🙂
Congratulations Kevin!
Thanks Bill.
Congratulations, Kevin! Absolutely appropriate, and well-deserved.
Thanks Andy. 🙂
That’s fabulous, Kevin. Quite a tribute.
Thanks for the kind words, Yoni.