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Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
“I just want to use it; I don’t want to know how it works.” – Unknown My Signal colleagues and I give out digital-preservation advice based on our research, our experiences and our understanding of best practices. We also try to pay attention to questions from the general public, with whom we interact at events …
Posted in: Personal Archiving, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
In part 1 of this article, I wrote that relational databases are the engines that drive digital genealogy. Databases make it possible to quickly search through enormous quantities of records, find the person you’re looking for and discover related people and events. And when institutions collaborate and share databases, statistical information becomes enriched. For example, …
Posted in: Digital Content, Partners and Collaboration, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
The popularity of genealogy websites and TV shows is rapidly growing, mainly because the Internet has made it so convenient to access family history information. Almost everything can be done through the computer now. Before the digital age, genealogical research was not only laborious and time consuming, it also resulted in boxes of documents: photos, …
Posted in: Digital Content, Partners and Collaboration, Personal Archiving, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Nowadays when we prepare a will, we have the added responsibility of leaving instructions to our loved ones about what to do with our online things after we die. Bequeathing has grown more complicated. Much of our online content consists of our writings – email, text, tweets, blogs, wikis and more – and our loved …
Posted in: Digital Content, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Over the past few years I have been organizing my family’s digital videos and digitizing our old videocassettes. All along I have tried to follow the personal digital archiving advice that my colleagues and I publish about organizing and backing up your personal collections. Now that I have collected, organized and stored our videos on …
Posted in: Digital Content, Personal Archiving, Tools and Infrastructure