How Much Is Your Trash Worth?

I read this week about the University of Texas's massive collection of authors' papers. The director of their archives pays big bucks to authors' estates or even to living authors to have their letters and drafts and original manuscripts and assorted detritus housed there. The Link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/11/070611fa_fact_max

This raises some questions for me. Like, what about after I'm all famous and sought after? My "archives" are mostly a collection of pixels cryptically arranged throughout cyberspace. I've got notes in "Google docs," thousands of emails, electronic forum postings hither and yon, and of course, most valuable of all, my collection of rep points.

And if I were to die (funny place for an "if" eh?) would anyone even be able to access this stuff? Would my husband or my kids or the executor of my literary estate -- okay, let's say yours since mine, frankly, is scant -- be allowed to log into your google account and your yahoo account and aw and root around in there? Should we be including our passwords in our wills? Will the next generation of writers not have the privilege of benefiting from our "papers?" Will this generation of writers not have the benefit of being paid for the scraps of paper crammed into the corners of their desk drawers and securing a more comfortable life for their heirs?

How is this whole digital thing going to work, posthumously speaking?

I added the link to the original post. But I have a history of bad linkage. Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll ask Chuck what to do.

Maryn said:

Seriously, you do need to provide sites and passwords not necessarily in your will, but stored with it. Otherwise, your survivors will never be able to tell your email address book entries, or the people at the chats you like, or your pals here or at IMDb or wherever you hang out online that you died.

Click to expand...

How did you know to do that? Probably because it's so obvious. But somehow, I thought that maybe there was some kind of policy or tradition where your survivor would contact Yahoo (or whatever) and say okay, she's dead now, can I have a look?

I mean, I didn't really think that. It's just one of those thinks that you realize you'd been thinking once you stop thinking without thinking about it.