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March 7, 2004

Over at the ACS weblog, Tuffer has a spectacular post about his visit to the Blackmun archives at the Library of Congress: Justice Blackmun Papers: The law school years, with a look at Blackmun's notes and diaries from law school.

In contrast to Justice Blackmun's notes and diaries, my contemporaries and I largely use computers for taking notes. In my classes, the number of students taking notes on laptops exceeds the number of students using trusty old pen and paper. I wonder if future scholars will have an easier or more difficult time going through our digital archives. Notes taken in handwriting are substantially more personal and distinctive than typed notes. Computer files are often treated as epehemeral and often we make insufficient efforts to properly archive computer files.