One Day in History

October 17, 2006 1:33 AM

One Day in History is a national blogging event organised by the History Matters campaign in the UK. They want UK citizens (or anyone with UK ties) to blog a diary entry about their day today (17 October). The entries will be archived at the British Library, creating a snapshot of everyday life in 2006 for the bemusement of future generations.
posted by chrismear (7 comments total)

This is absolutely rediculous.... since WHEN has history mattered? pah.
posted by wumpus at 1:42 AM on October 17, 2006

The BBC News article suggests that you should write about anything mundane, but the campaign FAQ says:

"You are, however, encouraged to include in your diary-blog something about how history impacted on you that day - whether it be simply travelling past an historic landmark, discussing family history at home, watching another repeat of Only Fools and Horses, or listening to Dad's 60's music, again! It could be anything."

IMHO, archive.org does this sort of thing better - bloggers blog about mundane things anyway, and do so without being self-conscious of their place in history.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 1:46 AM on October 17, 2006

I think it's a real shame that it's not actually hooked into peoples' real blogs. That would give a much richer and more interesting snapshot. Instead it's just a big archive of entries that people have sent in.

It's a pity they're only using the B word because it's trendy, rather than doing something that uses blogs in a smarter way.
posted by iaintait at 2:03 AM on October 17, 2006

Some people are complaining about the enforced copyright issues with the One Day In History project, suggesting that something like Creative Commons should have been used rather than having to grant the project the rights to your post.
posted by TheDonF at 2:04 AM on October 17, 2006

Shades of 24 Hours in Cyberspace.
posted by Plutor at 5:02 AM on October 17, 2006

Dear diary. Today I got out of bed, cried in a corner for a few hours, fapped a bit, cried some more, and went back to bed... again. History repeats itself, they say.
posted by arcticwoman at 5:32 AM on October 17, 2006

I'm suprised by the elitist-sounding responses to the project.

"Blog" is defined as:
a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer,

Although they might not be facilitating blogging in what folks consider the traditional sense, there's nothing wrong with the way they're using the word. In fact, if they did not use the word blog, somone in this thread would have leveled the exact opposite criticism to iaintait's, asking "Isn't this just blogging?"

It's not Web 2.0? It's not parsing RSS feeds? Not using Creative Commons?

I expect historians to be concerned about recording history and am more than happy to give them a pass on their lack of ambition to build a technologically complex solution to a one-time task.
posted by VulcanMike at 5:41 AM on October 17, 2006