Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light, though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they, do not go gentle into that good night.
Professor collects diaries of ordinary people
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Professor Yim Jin-hee
By Jhoo Dong-chan
By Jhoo Dong-chan
Professor Yim Jin-hee, 47, at Myongji University’s Graduate School of Records, Archives and Information Science, has collected ordinary people’s diaries, capturing their lives on May 12 of every year.
This is the third year since she started the collecting.
“Records to capture ordinary people’s everyday routines has been relatively poorly preserved in comparison to public records that are maintained by the government,” Yim told The Korea Times.
Although we now live in the era of the digital media, it is still very important to store them properly, Yim said.
“It is true social network services and online blogs overflow with users’ comments and photos. But if we do not store them properly, they will fade away.
“And diaries are an unparalleled record because they contain each individual’s honest emotions and ideas.”
The idea originated from the Mass Observation Project in the United Kingdom that called for people from all parts of the country to record everything they did ― from when they woke up to when they went to sleep ― starting on May 12, 1937.
The project was suspended in 1955, but resumed in 2010 by a research team at the University of Sussex in the U.K.
After signing an agreement with the research team, Yim started to collect diaries in Korea from 2013.
She has collected nearly 1,500 diaries so far, and will collect some 1,000 more this year.
“(In diaries) people talk about very common stories in their routine lives, like love, fashion, work and so on,” Yim said.
“But their plain records on May 12 will be invaluable assets to our next generation.”
Last year, Yim helped a Korean student, who majored in linguistics at the University of Sussex, by providing last year’s diaries.
“He was studying Korean people’s foreign word usage. He said our diary archive helped his study a lot,” Yim said.
This year, Yim will also collect diaries of some people with extraordinary circumstances like soldiers and prisoners. The ferry Sewol tragedy victims’ families also agreed to send their diaries for the project.
Anyone can send their diary of May 12 to Yim at omeka.hmarchives.org if it was written on computer, and by mail if it was handwritten.