Smithsonian embraces social media in a big way.

• Position: SOCIAL MEDIA - Brief article

If you think you have social media challenges, consider the challenges for the Smithsonian Institute, which has:

* 500 social media, social networking, and other Web 2.0 accounts

* 143 Facebook accounts

* 100 Twitter accounts

* 74 blogs

* 66 Flickr accounts

* 60 YouTube accounts

Each of these accounts, says the institute, focuses on a different audience and specializes in a unique topic. And each is considered to have historical value. So, of course, the Smithsonian preserves them.

"Preservation of any type of digital record is more complicated than paper preservation and requires more resources over time," wrote Jennifer Wright, Smithsonian archivist and records manager, on 'Tae Bigger Picture," one of the organization's 74 blogs. "Keeping this in mind, we closely look at the records to determine if we need to preserve them in their entirety. Our goal is to preserve enough data to satisfy the needs of future researchers while minimizing the amount of duplicate, extraneous, and less historically valuable data."

Privacy is a major...