Monday, February 13, 2012

Personal Digital Archiving at iLibrarian

Do you feel that your personal digital files are becoming increasingly difficult to manage? Our ever-growing collections of digital assets such as documents, photographs, music, videos, correspondence, and Web sites make us vulnerable to data loss. What steps can we take to protect these valuable assets? Enter Ellyssa Kroski from iLibrarian. Today she wrapped up her eight-part series on personal digital archiving. Following an introductory overview that addresses challenges, obstacles, and the difference between backups and archives, the remaining posts cover the areas of strategy, storage options, file formats, policy, implementation, cataloging, and stewardship. Written for the layperson and based on a three-hour workshop that Kroski offers, this is a thorough yet concise introduction to concepts and strategies we should all consider for our own personal digital archives.

In her conclusion Kroski also provides links to resources she found exceptionally useful as she gathered content for her workshop.

Personal Archiving: Preserving Your Digital Memories: Library of Congress
Creating a Personal Digital Archive: ABC  News
Digital Preservation Management Tutorial: Cornell University Library
Decoding the Digital: A Common Language for Preservation: British Library Conference Proceedings

Image: dolescum (Anne G), Archives' stacks, 2009, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

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