“Archives of Everyday Life” refers to an organization or facility which collects, appraises, selects and preserves the document from the memory of individuals, groups, or a society through categorizing and classifying lives and cultures of ordinary people. The document includes materials such as diaries, autobiography, letters, and notes. It also covers any digital files or hypertext like posts from blogs and online communities, or photos uploaded on Social Network Services. Many research fields including the Records Management Studies has continuously claimed the necessity of collection and preservation of ordinary people’s records on daily life produced every moment. Especially diary is a written record reflecting the facts experienced by an individual and his self-examination. Its originality, individuality and uniqueness are considered truly valuable as a document regardless of the era. Lately many diaries have been discovered and presented to the historical research communities, and diverse researchers in human and social studies have embarked more in-depth research on diaries, their authors, and social background of the time. Furthermore, researchers from linguistics, educational studies, and psychology analyze linguistic behaviors, status of cultural assimilation, and emotional or psychological changes of an author.
In this study, we are conducting a metastudy from various research on diaries in order to reaffirm the value of “The 12th May Diaries Collection” as everyday life archives. “The 12th May Diaries Collection” consists of diaries produced and donated directly by citizens on the 12th May every year. It was only 2013 when Digital Archiving Institute in Univ. of Myungji organized the first “Annual call for the 12th May”. Now more than 2,000 items were collected including hand writing diaries, digital documents, photos, audio and video files, etc. The age of participants also varies from children to senior citizens. In this study, quantitative analysis will be made on the diaries collected as well as more profound discoveries on the detailed contents of each item. It is not difficult to see stories about family and friends, school life, concerns over career path, daily life and feelings of citizens ranging all different generations, regions, and professions. Based on keyword and descriptors of each item, more comprehensive examination will be further made. Additionally this study will also provide suggestions to examine future research opportunities of these diaries for different fields such as linguistics, educational studies, historical studies or humanities considering diverse formats and contents of diaries. Finally this study will also discuss necessary tasks and challenges for “the 12th May Diaries Collection” to be continuously collected and preserved as Everyday Life Archives.