Last year a single letter written by Albert Einstein changed hands for . But could a printout of an email or an electronic file ever reach similar heights?
That鈥檚 the question facing those who deal in the literary artefacts of public figures, as they struggle to work out how to do business in a world where information can be copied and distributed more easily than ever before.
Booksellers, collectors and libraries are already trading in digital objects, Joan Winterkorn, of antiquarian booksellers , told attendees at the at the British Library earlier this week. When Emory University Library , it received a desktop computer, three laptops, an external hard drive and a alongside paper files.
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And the writer John Updike, who died last month, started using computers in the 1980s, Winterkorn pointed out 鈥� so his 鈥減apers鈥� will include a substantial cache of electronic documents.
Tumbling prices
So far, however, digital archives have been traded as just a small fraction of a larger, mainly paper-based, archive, and to date the paper component has largely driven the prices achieved. Indeed, no-one is quite sure how much the digital ephemera of an author鈥檚 work are worth.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 feel the same way about the printout of an email as I do a letter,鈥� said , a literary manuscript specialist at auctioneers Sotheby鈥檚, adding that more tangible digital objects were easier for auctioneers to price and sell.
鈥淲hat about a laptop? For example, the one used by JK Rowling to write Harry Potter and the Philosopher鈥檚 Stone in an Edinburgh caf茅 has real value,鈥� he said, 鈥渂ecause she used it.鈥� Even if the hard drive had been cloned by a library, the artefact alone would still be valuable. Barack Obama鈥檚 Blackberry, even wiped of data, will likely make some archivist or collector very happy in future, he added.
Although a panel of auctioneers and booksellers suggested that digital archives would end up being valued at levels close to their paper equivalents, conference delegate , from , suggested that prices should actually fall to almost nothing. 鈥淚sn鈥檛 it about scarcity? Once it鈥檚 been copied and distributed the value is gone, it鈥檚 just a piece of memory.鈥�
鈥淭he nature of digital information is that it鈥檚 near-infinitely copyable,鈥� agreed Peter Hirtle, who works on technology strategy at . To turn it into something of value, 鈥測ou鈥檙e having to deny the nature of the medium鈥�, he argued.
Unintended revelations
Digital collections also pose new problems for archivists, pointed out Winterkorn. 鈥淚鈥檝e appraised collections that included disks that an author no longer has the computer to read, and I鈥檝e had to take it on faith there is information on them.鈥�
People giving up their archive are also likely unprepared for a digital world, she pointed out, because computers and emails can reveal much more about someone鈥檚 personal life than paper letters.
Winterkorn says authors may find themselves divulging more than they realised, and that those valuing collections may have to search through them for potentially embarrassing material to avoid later arguments.
