Digital legacy: Respecting the digital dead

Digital legacy: Respecting the digital dead
Updated 10:47 06 May 2011 by Sumit Paul-Choudhury

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20445M

Interesiting article that I heard from Personal Archive list serv. It briefly covers key problems that many of us (including archivists) could experience or confront when we think of long lives of our digital materials beyond our own life times. The article, however, makes me think again about the notion of "citizen archivists" by Richard Cox, especially related to developing digital archiving tool. Perosnal digital archiving is and will be the concern for every digital users and closely tied to our everyday personal information management methods.

"As soon as you turn a computer on, you start changing dates": This is so true and has been an issue for digital preservation.

Preservationists vs. Deletionists

One of my colleagues, Craig Blaha, forwarded this to me.

Digital Legacy: The Fate of Your Online Soul
New Scientist (04/23/11) Sumit Paul-Choudhury
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028091.400-digital-legacy-the-fate-of-your-online-soul.html?page=1

I will say that we are "preservationists" AND "deletionists" in real.

Personal digital archives: Preservation of documents, preservation of self

Dissertation proposal [PDF]: Personal digital archives: Preservation of documents, preservation of self. Sarah Kim, defended and passed on December, 2010.

Abstract:
Personal archiving is a practice through which people manage and preserve documents that have
particular meanings to them for a long time. The pervasive use of digital technology in everyday
life changes the way that people interact with documents and thus have an influence on archiving
practices. Viewing personal archiving as a self-reflective practice that involves psychological
and social processes of reviewing, understanding, and presenting life and self, the proposed study aims to explore digital archiving of ordinary individuals in relation to the construction of self. It uses in-depth case studies to gain a holistic understanding of how people conduct and experience archiving in a digital environment as close to research participants‟ perspectives as possible. Findings of the proposed study will eventually contribute to development of a theory or a model of personal digital archiving, which can have implications for research on digital cultural heritage preservation and personal information management/archiving tools and services design.

Book: After Death, Protecting Your 'Digital Afterlife'

Digital archiving to-do handbook by Romano and Carroll. However, no references or bibliography. Minimum citations. How can a book like this, which is neither a fiction nor a personal essay, be written with such a little amount of citations even though it may be written for general audience?
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/10/132617124/after-death-protecting-your-digital-afterlife

The Digital Beyond Website: It provides an digital death related online service list

New Clip: Internet Commenters: This Is You

"One day Collier took his curiosity a little further and began to compile a list of comments from a particularly prolific member on IMDB.com (the Internet Movie Database).

He realized, viewed as a whole, the comments created something close to a profile or character sketch of the person writing them.

Collier took the concept to McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers, who liked the idea. Collier has featured 10 commenters since March.

"The good ones reveal themselves — after a lot of looking — to be kind of characters," Collier says. "They're not an exact representation of who this person is, but they are real characters." "

NPR Internet Commenters: This Is You
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/20/131471581/internet-commenters-this-is-you

Research method for personal digital archiving research

I have been exploring Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as a research method for my dissertation. IPA's idiographic and inductive approach seems like a perfect match for studying personal digital archiving practices in everyday lives.

Interesting short articles about IPA:
Smith, J. A. (2004). Reflecting on the development of interpretative phenomenological analysis and its contribution to qualitative research in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1(1), 39-54.

Larkin, M., Watts, S., & Clifton, E. (2006). Giving voice and making sense in interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 102-120.

Archiving social networking sites

Archive-it (http://www.archive-it.org/) is an interesting archiving service by the Internet Archives, which is "able to capture most publicly available web pages, including social networking sites" (https://webarchive.jira.com/wiki/display/ARIH/Archiving+Social+Networking+Sites+with+Archive-It). However, I continue to wonder how robust this tool/service can be to assist individuals to collect and preserve their own, private digital content produced in the social networking sites.

Lecture video: Keeping Found Things Found project

This is a lecture video about how people keep and organize information. Although the issue of personal archiving is not the focus and the video is a bit old, still fun to listen to. Thanks, Sam.

Google TechTalks May 17, 2006
William Jones is an Research Associate Professor in The Information School at the University of Washington where he manages the Keeping Found Things Found project.

Thank you, Sam.

Hi-tech aims to improve lifestyle

Hi-tech aims to improve lifestyle
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8062327.stm

I will say, in a Haiku style,

Personal information
More and more.

Book: Richard Cox, Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling

Book: Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling by Richard Cox, 2009

"Archivists need to transform their own culture from one of collecting and acquiring to one of collaborating and assisting. Doing this should also open up new possibilities for promoting, in a more understandable fashion, the archival mission. ... At one time, personal archives were the backbone of public archives, the most prized acquisition by archivists, manuscripts curators, and special collections librarians because of the quality of the documentary evidence they provide and often their association with important events or famous people. Now they may be valued more by the individuals and families keeping them for highly personal reasons of identity, memory, sentimentality, or whatever. In my opinion, the archival mission is in the midst of great change, and it is a change that needs to be embraced and nurtured."

Indeed! I think, the increasing interests in how to preserve/archive "my own digital materials" can be turn into a golden opportunity for professional archivists to expand the rigid boundary of traditional archives, interact with more ordinary individuals as their clients, and take an active role in the information technology development where the money goes.