The rise of the e-mail over the written letter has prompted the British Library to open an archive for the electronic word. The library’s collection of letters, which includes correspondence between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, will be joined by a database of emails submitted by the public.

The venture is designed to take a snapshot of the British public’s writing habits. The archive is designed to hold more than a million emails. Curators at the library hope to capture blunders, complaints, humour, romance and other topics including “tales from abroad”.

A spokeswoman for the project said that all emails submitted would be included, provided that they were not derogatory or advertising. Members of the public would be able to access the archive from terminals at the British Library, although names of individuals and companies would be witheld for 100 years.

John Tuck, head of British Collections at the library, said that the intention was to preserve present-day communications for future generations.

“E-mail has in many respects replaced traditional forms of communications such as letters or memoranda, thousands of examples of which we have at the British Library,” he said.

“In the digital age e-mail has become prevalent in our day-to-day lives. Digital archiving of e-mail has never been attempted before on this scale, and we’re very excited to be capturing such a rich slice of contemporary life.”

The library has begun to collect emails written by scientists and literary figures after funding from Microsoft. Curators have drawn up a list of people whose emails it would like for its archive, including J. K. Rowling, A. S. Byatt, Alastair Campbell and Stephen Hawking.

Jonnie Robinson, curator for social sciences at the British Library, said that ordinary people’s emails would give researchers an insight into how electronic communication had changed the way we spoke.

“It has created a new kind of English,” he said. “Written English has traditionally been a rigid, formal style of English while speech is much less formal. E-mail straddles the two.

People will be able to research whether e-mail is reflecting the transformation of English, or causing it.”

Hotmail estimates that 270 million people use e-mail today, compared with 56,000 in 1996. The archive will stop taking submissions at the end of the month and the first samples will be made available in July. The library hopes to present the complete archive early next year, but said that it could take longer if it is inundated.

Jo Wickremasinghe, campaign manager at Windows Live Hotmail, said: “We’re trying to illustrate how integral e-mail has become to our everyday lives. Mini-soap operas are played out in inboxes across the country every day, from job offers to wedding proposals, big breaks to break-ups. We want this unique archive to make absorbing reading for years.”

Anyone who wants to take part should forward emails to email@emailbritain.co.uk

Time travellers

The BBC programme Blue Peter buried its first time capsule in June 1971, with freshly minted decimal coins and presenters’ photographs. It was opened in 2000

A copy of The Times dated December 16, 1845, was found inside a bottle at a house in Glasgow in 1999

A capsule containing an England shirt and a Harry Potter book were buried under the pitch at the new Wembley Stadium in 2005

The Millennium Dome’s foundations include a time capsule with a toy car, an asthma inhaler and 2,000 letters from Blue Peter viewers

Source: Times database

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