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Category: Personal Archiving

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Lots of Transfer Collectives Keep Cultural Memory Safe: The Importance of Community Audio/Visual Archiving

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

This is a guest post collectively written by the XFR Collective (pronounced “transfer collective”), a grass-roots digitization and digital-preservation organization. They work with artists and media creators to rescue and preserve digital works, utilizing open, free platforms — such as the Internet Archive — for long-term preservation and access. We featured them in two previous …

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The Personal Digital Archiving 2015 Conference

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The annual Personal Digital Archiving conference is about preserving any digital collection that falls outside the purview of large cultural institutions. Considering the expanding range of interests at each subsequent PDA conference, the meaning of the word “personal” has become thinly stretched to cover topics such as family history, community history, genealogy and digital humanities. New York …

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How Academics Manage their Personal Digital and Paper Information in their Digital Work Space

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

This is a guest post from Assistant Professor Kyong Eun Oh and Doctoral Student Vanessa Reyes, Simmons College School of Library and Information Science. I asked them to share their research with readers of The Signal because some of the digital preservation challenges that Simmons College faces — and Oh and Reyes researched — hold …

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Helping Congress Archive Their Personal Digital Files

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

By early December 2014, a Congressional election year, newly elected Members of Congress were preparing for public service as outgoing Members were ending their public service and attending exit briefings. At an event sponsored by the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress, the December 3rd “Life After Congress” seminar, Robin Reeder, Archivist of the …

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“Elementary!” A Sleuth Activity for Personal Digital Archiving

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

As large institutions and organizations continue to implement preservation processes for their digital collections, a smattering of self-motivated information professionals are trying to reach out to the rest of the world’s digital preservation stakeholders —  individuals and small organizations — to help them manage their digital collections. Part of that challenge is just making people aware that: …

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Personal Digital Archiving 2015 in NYC — “Call for Papers” Deadline Approaching

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The Personal Digital Archiving Conference 2015 will take place in New York City for the first time. The conference will be hosted by our NDIIPP and NDSA partners at New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program April 24-26, 2015. Presentation submissions for Personal Digital Archiving are due Monday, December 8th, 2014 by 11:59 …

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Digital Archiving: Making It Personal at the Public Library

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The following is a guest post from Samantha Thomason,  web developer at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and chair of the Virginia Library Association’s Local History, Genealogy and Oral History Forum.  Because personal digital archiving covers so much territory — from scanning to cloud storage to estate planning — it is easy to …

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Personal Digital Archiving 2014

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The fifth annual Personal Digital Archiving conference is on April 10-11 and you can still register online until tomorrow, April 1. This conference attracts a variety of information-technology professionals with a range of digital-preservation interests, mainly oriented toward the needs of individuals rather than the digital collections of cultural institutions. Topics include – but are …

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Ten Tips for Preserving Your Holiday Digital Memories

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

During Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season, you might take photos and video of friends and loved ones. You might make audio recordings of voices, conversations and music. Whatever you photograph or record, we hope you will take time to backup and preserve your digital stuff. As soon as you can, transfer the …