thatcamp personal digital archiving

Personal Digital Archiving

THATCamp Pittsburgh 2013

Today’s Lineup

Personal Digital Archiving Introduction

Recommendations for email, digital photos, social media

Heinz History Center

Historical Society of Western Pa. in 1879

Mission to preserve and provide access to history of the area.

Detre Library and Archives

Families, Businesses, community organizations

Diaries, photographs, letters, films & more

1700s-present day

Born Digital Material

In the future…

Email

Digital images/video

Microsoft Office documents

Websites

Social Media

Paper vs. Digital

Papers and photographs can be neglected for periods of time

Digital files need to be actively managed over time

Threats to your files

Hard Drive Crashes

Not if, but when

No warning

Complete loss

Technological Obsolescence

1790 1990

Beware of proprietary formats!

Companies may discontinue support for older formats

Companies might go out of businesses

Try to keep your files in widely-supported, open formats

Cloud Insecurity

How long will these companies last?

Subject to changes in TOS

Privacy/Hacker concerns

Bit Rot

Store media degrades over time

Floppy disks, CDs/DVDs, flash memory

Files can become corrupted

Image credit - Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit http://wiki.dpconline.org

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Steps for Digital Archiving

Identify what you have and where you have it

Select what is important

Organize your files

Make copies

But first…

Make sure you have at least one backup, preferably in another location

Backing up is not the same as archiving

1. Identify Where Your Files Are

2. Decide what is Important

Keep what has enduring value

Highest quality version

Final drafts

Clutter impedes use!

3. Organize

Gather all of your files to single folder on your computer

Create a centralized Digital Archive folder

Use subfolders to organize by format

4. Make Copies

Regularly create external copies of your data

Store copies in different locations

Cloud storage

Consider a replacement schedule

Formats

Email

Photographs

Facebook/Social Media

Email

Where is your

email?

Online accounts

Email Client

Old accounts, devices

Select What is

Important

Look for emails that have long-term value

Download attachments

Export your email

IMAP and Mozilla Thunderbird

If using Outlook or Apple Mail, save files outside of these programs

Organize

Make use of folders, labels

Organize by date, topic, etc .

Export to your Archive folders .eml, mbox formats

Google Inactive Manager

In Gmail settings page

After inactivity, content sent to trusted contacts or deleted

Google Drive, Picassa, etc.

Images

Where are your Photos?

Decide What is Important

Selection process

Select highest quality version of your image

Convert raw files to more widely supported formats

Organize

Organize into folders

Add meaningful file names, tags and description.

Contextual info adds value to your images.

Metadata is your friend

EXIF

Geolocation

Some metadata might be software/site dependent (facebook)

Social Media

Facebook

Letters + photo album + diary + scrapbooks + etc.

Community adds to your content

What you get:

Your Photos, with some metadata and comments

Chat, messages

Your wall info

Your “likes”

And also…

List of friends I’ve unfollowed

Pending friend requests

IP addresses used when logging in

Ad topics (A list of topics that you may be targeted against based on your stated likes, interests and other data you put in your timeline.)

What you don’t get

Photographs uploaded by other people

Certain metadata (tags, locations, titles, likes)

Facebook look and feel

Twitter

Tweets can be downloaded through settings page

No lists of followers, those followed

Thank you!

Matthew StraussChief ArchivistDetre Library and ArchivesSenator John Heinz History Center

mstrauss@heinzhistorycenter.org