I am relentlessly optimistic about the future of personal digital archiving. There is simply too much at stake, in my mind, to feel anything but hopeful. Let’s face it, though: it’s hard. A well-regarded expert who has spent years studying personal digital habits tells me that people just won’t invest time and effort to preserve […]
archives, digital collections, Digital Content, digital formats, digital preservation, drives, hard drives, Personal Archiving, solid state drives, storage, tools
What People Are Asking About Personal Digital Archiving: Part 2
During Preservation Week 2013, I gave a personal digital archiving webinar in which over 600 people participated. Ninety one people submitted questions online and two-thirds of the questions centered on two topics: digital photos and storage. In part 1 of this blog post, I gave sample questions and answers about digital photos. Today I will give sample […]
chris prom, Digital Content, electronic mail, email, eml, gareth knight, mbox, Partners and Collaboration, Publications and Resources
The “What” of Email Archiving
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the need for applied digital preservation research. The post generated a number of great comments and I’ll take some time over the next few months to dig a little deeper into each subject area and try and tease out where the useful efforts are, while also identifying […]
Picturing the Democratization of Digital Stewardship
When we first started promoting personal archiving on our website a couple of years ago, the topics was fairly new. The efforts of major institutions to preserve and make available digital content were well-known, of course, but the idea of doing something similar for personal material was embryonic. Since then, attention to what can be […]
death cycle, digital collections, Digital Content, Digital Curation, digital preservation, life cycle, Tools and Infrastructure
The Darker Side of the Digital Content Life Cycle
In May I was suffering from writer’s block and crowdsourced some topics for blog posts on Facebook. I got some very funny suggestions, many useful suggestions, and one that was both humorous and serious that kept sticking in my mind from my LC colleague Rosie Storey: “Digital content death cycle. Hoard, corrupt, abandon, neglect.” This […]
Best practices, Data Management, Data Sharing, lessons, postdocs, research, scientist, tips, tools, Tools for Data, training, workflow
Software Carpentry and Data Management
About a year ago, I started hearing about Software Carpentry. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I envisioned tech-types showing up at your house with routers, hard drives, and wireless mice to repair whatever software was damaged by careless fumblings. Of course, this is completely wrong. I now know that it is actually […]