Personal Digital Archiving at the National Book Festival, Sept. 24 and Sept. 25

The following is a guest post by Erin Engle, Digital Archivist, NDIIPP.

Like many here at the Library, we’re busy preparing for the 2011 National Book Festival on the mall in Washington, DC.  The festival will take place Saturday, Sept. 24 and Sunday, Sept. 25.

The festival now runs over two days and includes more talks and readings by authors, illustrators and poets.  There’s a good chance one of your favorites authors is coming.

I have a personal reason to be extra excited this year: I’m joining my colleagues to talk about personal digital archiving with book festival goers.  We’ll provide information in the Preserve Your Photos area of the Library of Congress Pavilion (here’s a  handy PDF map that shows where the pavilion is located).  We were at the festival last year and had a great time talking with hundreds of people.

Over the past few years, NDIIPP has developed tips for getting starting with digital archiving for digital photographs and other kinds of personal materials.  This section of our website is very popular, and it is clear that many people are eager for advice about how to save their personal digital memories.

This is why we are thrilled to participate in the book festival: it gives us a wonderful opportunity to extend our reach and speak with a huge public audience.  They ask us questions and tell us about their challenges in managing their digital files.  We enjoy helping people sort out these issues and see this work as crucial part of our commitment to public service.  These kinds of conversations also help us think about how to improve our personal archiving tips.

The book festival is one of many public outreach events we’ve participated in over the past few years to raise the awareness about personal digital preservation. We’ve held a Personal Archiving Day two years running; presented webinars on preserving personal digital memories; produced videos explaining digital preservation topics; talked at Smithsonian-sponsored events; and written about saving our personal memories in this blog.

If you’ll be in the DC area this weekend, visit the National Book Festival and stop by our table and say hello. We’ll have staff on hand to answer your questions, provide you with some handouts and show off some fascinating examples of old computer technology.