- Are you afraid that someone living today might read your diary after you have gone?
- Would you like your diary preserved for posterity 75 years from now?
- Do you want to dispose of your journals now, but cannot think of a good way to do it?
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then consider giving your journals to the The Great Diary Project.
Based in the United Kingdom and borne out of an impulse to preserve the everyday ideas of ordinary life, The Great Diary Project was founded in 2007 by Dr. Polly North, who is the founding director of the project at BishopsGate Institute, and by Dr. Irving Finkel, who is Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures of the British Museum.
Dr. Finkel found random diaries that were to be tossed away and purchased them. In his work with scribblings from ordinary life in the ancient world, such as a cuneiform of a receipt for livestock, Dr. Finkel found a window, a glimpse into what life was like beyond the statues and monuments to world leaders.
The founders of The Great Diary Project take that same approach to today’s diaries – they find value in the ordinary. As time moves on, what seems so mundane to us will be odd to posterity, or at least different enough to be of great value to historians. The project accepts diaries from anywhere and loosely define the concept. They preserve them and make them available to the public.
For those worried about people today reading your diary, don’t worry. When you deposit your diary with The Great Diary Project, you can determine when your diary can be made available to the public. You can tell them that this book is not available to the public until a century from now. By then, every person that you are worried will see it will likely not know what you’ve done with the thing or will have long since passed on from the planet.
Check out The Great Diary Project.
Peace,
Deborah