Here is another story that encourages me to write again about one of my favorite suggestions: we need to make digital copies of every document of historical interest (and other documents too!) and then store the digital copies off-site.

Who knows how much history has been lost in Kentucky in recent days?

A good bit of Appalachian history and arts got soaked in the record flooding in Eastern Kentucky. In Whitesburg, water may have breached the vault at Appalshop, where the arts and media collective stored more than 20,000 items, including decades worth of film, oral histories, videotapes of musical performances, photo collections and other records.

Driven by rainfall of eight inches or more in places in just a few hours, the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Whitesburg swelled to more than six feet above the old record flood, inundating downtown.

“Some of the film from Appalshop was all through the streets and everything,” said Austin Caudill, 24, who lives downtown. “We could lose not just businesses but history.”