Library of Congress Personal Digital Archiving Day kit

As Cal Lee and others have pointed out, archivists working in the digital era are ethically obligated to provide guidance to people who wish to preserve their personal electronic files. The Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) has devoted a lot of effort to creating non-technical videos, handouts, and other materials that explain the basics of digital preservation to laypeople, and it's hosted several "Personal Digital Archiving Days" that enable residents of the Washington, DC area to get one-on-one advice from Library of Congress staffers.

In an effort to ensure that people living in other parts of the United States receive similar guidance, NDIIPP staffer Erin Engle and NDIIPP volunteer Keri Myers have created a Personal Digital Archiving Day kit that will enable other repositories to host similar events. This kit features a host of helpful resources:

• An overview of the work that goes into planning, organizing, publicizing, and running a public event of this nature
• Sample forms and checklists that identify the myriad details that event planners must address and track
• Sample publicity materials
• Sample evaluation forms for attendees and for repository staff and volunteers
• Illustrated handouts that explain -- succinctly and in a resolutely non-technical manner -- the basics of
  • Organizing and preserving digital photographs, video files, audio files, e-mail, and other personal electronic records
  • Transferring digital photographs from a camera to a computer (don't laugh -- not everyone knows how to do this!)
  • Transferring video from tapes, DVDs, or cameras to a computer
  • Creating an e-mail archive
  • Creating digital copies of important paper records and photographs
  • Reducing the risk that files will be lost as a result of media obsolescence and media instability
    
• Links to digital preservation videos and other online resources created by the Library of Congress and other organizations
  

This kit won't make you a digital preservation expert, and anyone who wishes to hold a Personal Digital Archiving Day event should have at least some theoretical and practical electronic records knowledge. However, if you're familiar with electronic records issues or are, at the very least, willing to immerse yourself in the professional literature (you'll find a great starting point here) and wish to provide some much-needed guidance to the public, you'll find this kit immensely helpful.

E-mail management, part two

. . . And now for something completely different. David Stephens's approach to managing e-mail, which I posted about yesterday, is an enterprise-level solution to an enterprise-level problem. What about those of us -- l'Archivista among them -- who just can't seem to manage their personal e-mail appropriately? I've got a couple of personal accounts that are filled with sales pitches, listserv detritus, and other stuff that I really should delete, but I've got generous storage quotas and a finite amount of time. I've also got pretty decent search capability, but the volume of junk is starting to affect my search results. I recently needed to track down a Continental e-ticket and had to wade through a bunch of old Continental sales pitches before I could find it. Urgh.

For some of us, a new service, GiveBackMail, may help. GiveBackMail displays a new advertisement each time a user sends, opens, or deletes a message, and the service makes a small donation to charity each time a user performs one of these actions. At present, GiveBackMail allows users to earmark their donations for one of seven non-profit organizations working in a variety of areas: cancer, education, conservation, animal welfare, people with AIDS, microlending, and victims of the recent tornadoes. GiveBackMail hopes to add additional charities, and account holders can suggest charities that might warrant inclusion.

GiveBackMail users have the option of routing one or more of their existing AOL, GMail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts through GiveBackMail or setting up a separate GiveBackMail account; if they opt for the latter, they can keep their existing e-mail addresses and their correspondents will be none the wiser. Users can also the service to post updates to their Facebook or Twitter accounts.

A recent New York Times article notes that GiveBackMail's business model seeks to redirect users' eyeballs: instead of viewing ads served up by AOL, Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo, GiveBackMail wants you to route your e-mail through its servers and to view the ads it displays, and its charitable donations are designed to induce you not only to reroute your e-mail but also to change your e-mail management practices.

The Times article also notes that GiveBackMail is built upon the embedded-giving model that myriad corporations have recently embraced. If you purchase something or do something, a portion of the purchase price or corporate funds (up to a certain amount) will be donated to a specific cause. As Laura Starita points out, we should all think critically about this model, which can render "philanthropy subject to the retail cycle," undermine donor trust by failing to communicate how donations are being used, corrupt the desire to give by melding it with the desire to acquire, and paper over problematic environmental, labor, or other practices. However, if you're comfortable with viewing a few ads, think that the prospect of directing small sums of money to a non-profit organization will motivate you to clean up your inbox, and keep in mind that using GiveBackMail won't make you any sort of activist, then you might want to check it out. Moreover, GiveBackMail supplies monthly statements outlining how each users' donations have helped the charity he or she selected, which ought to help users feel more confident about the service.

I recently registered with GiveBackMail, and I found the process simple. I have only one complaint: I discovered only when I first attempted to register that GiveBackMail cannot be used to manage free, basic Yahoo e-mail accounts. GiveBackMail works only with Yahoo Plus accounts, but there is no mention of this fact anywhere in the "How It Works" or "Features" sections of the GiveBackMail site. I can't determine from the GiveBackMail site whether GiveBackMail works with the free versions of AOL, GMail, or Hotmail.

Undeterred by GiveBackMail's inability to help me get a grip on my Yahoo accounts, I set up a separate GiveBackMail account and plan on using it for a few routine things. GiveBackMail is currently in beta mode, and, as the Times points out, there's always the possibility that Google or one of the other big Web e-mail providers will undercut GiveBackMail by replicating its view-an-ad-make-a-donation business model, so I'm not 100 percent certain I want to make it my primary account at this time. However, so far I've been pretty pleased with GiveBackMail. Its interface is simple and intuitive, and it seems to do what it's supposed to do -- enable me to send, receive, organize, and delete messages and keep track of contacts -- without any hitches. Moreover, at least in the short term, I've gotten better at deleting all those useless messages . . . .

Thanks, Internet Archive

Apologies in advance for the bittersweet nature of this post.

An old friend of mine died in 2005. We had lost touch as our lives diverged -- different colleges, different graduate schools, different career choices -- but I always thought kindly of him and always suspected that somehow, someday, our paths would cross again. I learned that he had died some time after the fact, but I was deeply saddened by it. How could this kind, brilliant, exasperating, endearing man vanish from this earth at 35? He had already done some amazing things -- as an undergrad, he had registered thousands of voters, worked on several successful political campaigns, and been a viable city council candidate – and he was destined to do more amazing things. Why didn’t he get the chance to do them, and why didn’t he get the chance to grow old with the people who loved him?

Of course, life moves on, and after a time thoughts of my friend became more and more sporadic. However, a few nights ago, I was looking over old friends’ Facebook profiles, trying to find out whether any of them were also going back to Ohio for the holidays. All of a sudden, it struck me that the Internet Archive might have captured my deceased friend’s blog, which vanished from the live Web before I found out about his death. I did a little detective work, uncovered the blog’s URL, and, sure enough, discovered that the Internet Archive had captured it.

The Internet Archive’s copies omit some posts, many of the photographs, and all of the reader comments, but most of the blog’s contents are there. I spent several hours reading my friend’s posts and quickly discovered that he was still, in many respects, the person I knew: outrageously funny, keenly observant, kind one moment and cutting the next, and interested in and knowledgeable about technology, politics, and fashion.

However, there were also a few surprises. Given his political activism and acumen, I always half-expected that one day I would turn on the TV and see him in a sharp suit and tie, cogently speaking on behalf of one of the big Democratic Party organizations or gay rights lobbying groups. He was living in Washington, D.C., but hadn’t yet found his professional niche: he had gone to law school for a while, but as of 2005 he was bouncing between a number of short- and long-term IT jobs. He was also single -- a real surprise given his capacity for devotion, his intellect, and his looks. However, he really seemed to be enjoying life. He liked working in IT, he loved his cats (and devoted a lot of effort to concealing their presence in a no-pets-allowed apartment building), his interests were wide-ranging, and he had found good friends in D.C.

In a way, reading my friend’s blog was like getting the chance to have one last long talk with him. Even though doing so was in some respects painful -- all of the sorrow I felt when I first learned of his death came flooding back -- I’m immensely grateful that I got to spend a little more time with him, at least in spirit.

Any archivist or historian knows that humans keep historical records in part because records enable the living to connect -- intellectually and emotionally if not physically -- with the dead. A growing number of archivists are also aware of the need to preserve at least some digital personal materials and to provide advice and guidance to individuals and families seeking to preserve their own digital materials and the challenges associated with preserving personal and family digital materials posted on social media sites or stored by commercial entities. I’ve written about these issues before, but reading my friend’s blog has made these issues real and urgent in a way they weren’t before -- and has deepened my already profound appreciation for the Internet Archive. Thanks, Internet Archive, for ensuring that my friend’s words live on and for enabling me -- and others -- to spend just a little more time with him.

Preserving -- and hiding -- your personal e-records

Just in case you missed them, here are a couple of relatively new resources for people interested in preserving or securing their personal electronic records:

• The Library of Congress recently added a new Personal Archiving: Preserving Your Digital Memories section to its Digital Preservation Web site. The section explains -- succinctly and in non-technical terms -- how to identify, organize, and store images, audio files, video files, e-mail messages, Web site files, and other types of personal electronic records. Although it touches only lightly upon the preservation challenges posed by file format issues, people who follow its advice will be well on their way to ensuring that their important digital files are preserved. Strongly recommended.
  

• A couple of months ago, a Gizmodo post outlined how to minimize the chance that certain types of records become part of one's readily discoverable digital legacy. Thanks to the enhanced search capabilities of modern desktop operating systems, the time-honored practice of hiding files in innocuously named folders no longer works. This post outlines how individual Mac and Windows users can hide materials they would rather keep secret by changing file names and extensions, setting up encrypted personal archives, or using modern Web browsers' "private browsing" settings. None of these techniques will withstand forensic analysis, but they will hide files from other casual users of one's computer. Also strongly recommended -- and be sure to check out the comments, some of which contain detailed and knowledgeable technical advice.

Update, 2010-05-31: I should have specified that the Gizmodo post focuses upon concealing materials of an, um, mature nature. However, the advice it dispenses could be used to manage all kinds of other materials (e.g., surprise party plans, financial records) that a person might want to hide from other users of his or her computer.

New digital preservation video from the Library of Congress

Have you ever found yourself trying to explain to interested laypeople -- friends, relatives, elected officials -- precisely why it's so hard to keep electronic files intact and accessible over time? If so, be sure to check out Why Digital Preservation is Important for Everyone, the latest video from the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program. In less than three minutes, the video touches upon most of the big threats to digital materials (wait until you see someone attempting to insert a Zip disk and an open-reel data tape into a netbook!) and emphasizes the need for "active management" of electronic files. It's an accessible non-technical introduction for people who aren't familiar with the challenges of preserving digital materials, and a great resource and model for those of us who must cultivate support for digital preservation. A full transcript is available.

Managing your personal records

Archivist, manage thy records!

Spring -- a season long associated with cleaning and, at least in the United States, the filing of income taxes -- always brings forth a bouquet of news articles outlining just how long individuals should keep specific types of financial records. However, Jennifer Saranow Schultz's New York Times article, "Keep Your Financial Records No Longer Than You Must," really bears checking out. In addition to bearing a title guaranteed to make any records manager swoon with delight and providing a succinct overview of what to keep and what to toss, it provides some valuable advice for those of us who have become accustomed to banking online and to storing our records electronically: don't rely upon the online systems of banks and brokerages, remember that the Internal Revenue Service generally prefers paper records, and remain mindful of the security and accessibility concerns associated with electronic recordkeeping.

And for those of you hoping to partake of another popular springtime activity -- falling in love -- Debby Herbenek over at Gizmodo addresses a question of interest to ever-increasing numbers of heartbroken people: "Who Gets Custody of Shared Digital Memories When You Break Up?" Nowadays, one doesn't have to destroy photos in order to keep them out of an ex's hands; in our Web 2.0 world, a defriending or change of account permissions is all it takes. Herbenek recommends "that people save copies of photos they want" or ask their significant others for duplicates "while things are still good." I would suggest remaining single, which really will reduce the chance that you'll one day mourn the loss of your photos, your will to live, your sanity, or anything else; if this sentiment seems a bit tart to you, just wait until you see some of the crude responses to Herbenek's post!

Now if you'll excuse me, I really should do something about the box pictured above, which is an artifact of an unplanned and chaotic move a few years back. After a few years of not dealing with it, I decided that, even though it's not good records management practice, I could discard just about everything in the box if I just held onto it long enough. Judging from Saranow Schultz's article, "long enough" has arrived.

A little end-of-year electronic records housekeeping . . . .

Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and First Lady Margaretta "Happy" Rockefeller with guests on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1970. At noon on this day, Governor Rockefeller was sworn in as governor for the fourth and final time. New York (State). Governor. Public information photographs, 1910-1992. Series 13703-83, Box 3, Number 4408_23. Image courtesy of the New York State Archives.

I'm planning to devote part of the long weekend to tackling some long-neglected domestic chores, and I'm going to start by tidying up some loose ends on this blog. Owing to a combination of time pressures and a slow-to-heal (but steadily improving) injury, I let a few significant electronic records developments slide by without comments. All of them will remain relevant in 2010, so this is a good time to draw attention to them.

• In October, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled (Lake v. City of Phoenix) "that if a public entity maintains a public record in an electronic format, then the electronic version, including any embedded metadata, is subject to disclosure under [the state's] public records laws." This ruling may seem a bit obvious to any archivist or records manager, but it's actually quite significant: earlier this month, an attorney who works for New York State's Committee on Open Government noted that, until now, neither case law nor legislation has really specified whether metadata is covered by state and federal freedom of information laws. As a result, Washington State's Supreme Court, which is set to hear a similar case, and courts in other jurisdictions will likely devote a lot of attention to this ruling. If you're curious about some of the potential implications of this ruling, check out what Ars Technica and Inside Counsel have to say about it.
  

• Since 2003, ARMA and Cohasset Associates (and, sometimes, AIIM) have conducted annual surveys of electronic records management practices. The results of the 2009 survey were released in October, and as you might expect, the results are a mix of good and bad -- very bad -- news: organizations are starting to take action to correct their electronic records and information management problems, but most of them still have a long, long way to go before all of their problems are solved. Moreover, today's electronic records and information management shortcomings are so severe that they may well "jeopardize the future reliability, availability, and trustworthiness of many records. " If you want to figure out how your organization's policies and practices compare to those of others or have any sort of interest in electronic records management, the report (executive summary here, full text here) is an interesting, sobering read.
  

• AIIM regularly offers free Webinars focusing on records, content, and business process management, and archived Webinars are available via its Web site; registration is required. Recently archived Webinars focus on the current state of electronic records management, determining responsibility for records/content management, managing government content in the cloud, and other topics relating to electronic records management. If you're finding it harder and harder to get permission to travel to conferences or training sessions or simply want to keep pace with new developments, you might want to check out these Webinars.

• The New York State Historical Records Advisory Board recently launched a new Web resource, 9/11 Memory and History, that is designed to help survivors and people who lost friends or family on 11 September 2001 preserve photos or letters, drawings or paintings, scrapbooks, sound or video recordings, computer files or digital images, articles of clothing, or other objects. In addition to text-based instructions, the site also includes a number of short videos. Hofstra University archivist Geri Solomon and family member Margie Miller's discussion of what to save and how to save, and staff from the New York State Archives discuss other preservation-related concerns: Director of Operations Kathleen Roe talks about donating materials to a repository, Paper Conservator Sue Bove details how to care for photographs, drawings, and newspapers, and Electronic Records Archivist Bonita Weddle (i.e., Yours Truly) discusses preservation of digital files. Although this site is really targeted to the 9/11 community, other people interested in preserving family history materials and other personal materials should also find it useful.

• Andrew Sniderman has written a reflective, thought-provoking piece about the psychic cost of GMail and other services that unwittingly lead users to document their lives more fully than ever before: digital archives of e-mails, texts, etc., may make it harder for users to deceive themselves about their motives and actions, but they also make it easier for them to fixate on old wounds and regrets. An ever-growing number of people will no doubt agree with Sniderman's assertion that "preservation gives the past more weight than it sometimes deserves," and many professional archivists will no doubt regard their own personal digital archives with at least some ambivalence. However, as Cal Lee pointed out at SAA earlier this year, archivists are ethically obligated to furnish guidance to people who are struggling to care for their personal digital records, so we really should start thinking about what we'll say to friends, relatives, prospective donors, and others who come to us for help.
  

• Finally, some fun stuff. Building upon the success of its first animated short, Digital Preservation and Nuclear Disaster: An Animation, the good people at Digital Preservation Europe have produced two additional videos. Enjoy, and have a Happy New Year!

MARAC Fall 2009: S11, Scattered Treasures: The Stewardship of Private Collections in the 21st Century

Rotunda, City Hall, Jersey City, New Jersey, during the MARAC evening reception, 30 October 2009.

Although it's been years since I've worked with personal papers, I always like hearing about them, and I'm particularly glad I attended this session: one of the papers touched upon an electronic records issue that crossed my mind earlier last week, and the other focused on copyright law, about which I don't know enough.

Unfortunately, one of the presenters, Donna Wells (Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University) was ill, but session chair Wilda Logan (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) read her paper, which focused on what can happen when materials unexpectedly leave the custody of creators and their families.

In some instances, the severance of custody is accidental. After Washington, DC photographer Nestor Hernández died in 2006, his father placed a large number of his prints and other materials in a storage cubicle, but didn't tell other family members where the materials were housed. After Hernández's father died unexpectedly a short time afterward, the rent went into arrears and the contents of the cubicle were auctioned off. The devastated family then learned that the buyer was selling the prints at an open-air market for $3.00 apiece. Their only recourse was to assert their intellectual property rights whenever someone attempted to publish one of the images; the sale of the contents of the cubicle was perfectly legit.

In others, surviving relatives or other third parties see personal papers as sources of income. For example, civil rights icon Rosa Parks left her papers to a non-profit that taught civil rights history, but her surviving relatives successfully contested the will and the papers are being sold at auction. Wells has also gotten calls from foreclosure companies wanting to know whether photographs and other materials left behind by evicted residents are valuable; of course, these companies want to recoup lenders' losses, not donate materials to a repository.

These experiences have led Wells to give the following counsel to donors and their families:

• Know the procedures governing rental of storage facilities and what will happen to your property if the rent falls into arrears, and make sure that someone else knows where your materials are being stored.
• Give a trusted relative or friend your e-mail, online photo storage, etc., passwords.
• If you use an online storage service, make sure you know what will happen to your resources if you die.
• Let a trusted relative know what you want to have happen to your online and physical materials, even if you don't express your wishes in your will.

In an age when the digital equivalents of personal papers are being kept in the cloud, manuscript curators are going to spend a lot of time dealing with the complications of death in the digital era -- and all of us are likely going to feel ethically bound to provide guidance to families who don't want to donate materials but do want to access and preserve resources created by deceased loved ones.

The next presenter, Janet Fries (DrinkerBiddle) is an attorney who specializes in copyright and intellectual property law and who has represented numerous artists, authors, and musicians. Using the fate of Nestor Hernández's prints as a starting point, she furnished an overview of copyright and other laws. I'm going to emphasize just a few of the high points:

• A person who buys a print does not automatically get the rights associated with the print. When people bought Hernández's prints on the street for $3.00, they didn’t get the right to do anything with these images. When and if the prints are duplicated, the family will be able to discover who has various prints and to assert their rights.
• Copyright can be transferred via a will or a trust, and the laws of intestacy apply as well.
• Creators and their heirs have the right to terminate the transfer of copyright: existing law allows the person or entity who undertook the transfer to terminate or renegotiate the right of transfer after 35 years -- even if the transfer document purports to transfer rights in perpetuity. Heirs can also exercise this right. This right is little known and seldom exercised, but it’s really important.
• Copyrights don’t transfer by accident: handshake agreements aren’t sufficient.
• Fair use is very helpful but very unpredictable, and there are no hard-and-fast rules; don’t rely on any myths that come your way. The nature of the use has bearing: educational use and commentary are favored, but there are other factors.
• Repositories need to be aware that granting rights to others has pitfalls. Being in the chain of rights means being in the chain of liability. Repositories may also be vulnerable to charges of contributory and vicarious liability; refusing to make copies for for-profit uses might be a good idea, and making copies contingent upon the user’s securing of a licensing agreement is also a good idea.
• Rights of publicity governing people depicted in images vary from state to state. Be careful about using images if you lack signed release forms. Other materials may also be covered by this right; in New York State, for example, image, voice, name, and biographical details may not be used for trade or advertising without the express written consent of the person.

Fries also discussed how creators can spare others the Hernández family's experience. She encourages the artists she represents to, among other things, create inventories documenting where their works are stored and the intangible rights (copyright, moral right, trademark, patent, contract) associated with each work and to develop estate plans; in order to help them do so, she's developed a variety of forms that they can use. If an artist doesn’t want members of his or her family to know where works are stored or fears that listing locations will make theft easier, she stresses that telling no one is an illogical extension of a logical premise; information can be shared with a trusted friend, kept in a sealed envelope in a locked drawer, or kept in an attorney's office (but not a safe deposit box!)

I'm really not doing justice to Fries's presentation, which segued nicely into an extended Q&A about various copyright, permissions, and other legal issues. Copyright law is incredibly complex, and Fries excelled at giving us a sense of some of its nuances while dispensing lots of practical advice.

SAA 2009: Electronic Records Section meeting

Downtown Austin, as seen from the 19th floor of the Hilton Austin Downtown, at approximately 1:15 AM on 16 August 2009.

The Electronic Records Section actually met last Friday, but I held off blogging about it because of time presssures -- something had to give -- and because I was waiting for Cal Lee, who speedily delivered a great presentation, to place his slides online. The slides aren’t up yet, but want to finish blogging SAA 2009 before my memory dims. I’ll post the link ASAP.

Cal’s presentation was entitled “Addressing the Messiness of Electronic Records Acquisition”; there was a subtitle, too, but I couldn’t quite catch it.

Cal started out by noting that archivists are professionals, which means that they have special privileges because their decisions and actions reflect a distinctive body of expertise and because they are expected to use said expertise in service to the public. He then asserted that digital curation, which brings together archivists and other professionals, itself constitutes a distinct body of expertise. Digital curators seek to:

• Understand and attend to the intentions of creators and “primary users” of digital materials.
• Avoid unnecessary lock-in (i.e., use of proprietary file formats and systems) and free materials that have been locked in.
• Promote discovery of digital resources.
• Promote sense-making.
• Creating succession plans and taking other steps to ensure that resources are preserved over the long term.

In fulfilling these responsibilities, digital curators seek to act in the public interest by:

• Doing their work in socially responsible ways -- which is not the same as doing the tasks listed above.
• Not making a priori assumptions about who will perform specific digital curation tasks.
• Practicing “respectful and informed ignorance” when working with creators and end users.
• Bringing their own informed questions and answers to discussions concerning the creation, management, preservation, and provision of access to digital resources.

Cal then focused on the particular challenges of working with archival electronic records created by individuals, who often hand over entire hard drives, scatter portable media throughout boxes of paper records, participate in online communities they don’t own or control, and outlined three main strategies for dealing with personal electronic records:

• Getting: when archivists get data on computers or discs hidden in boxes, they must extract usable information from the media without inadvertently altering it. Cal noted that tools and techniques developed by digital forensics experts can be of great use to archivists who need to recover data when layers of technology fail or are no longer available, capture information that is not always readily visible (e.g., user account information, temporary files), and ensuring that their actions don’t irreversibly alter essential characteristics of the records. The digital forensics literature is extensive (the Internet Engineering Task Force’s RFC 3227 is a great starting point), and there are plenty of training opportunities and other events and open-source and commercial software packages available. However, using these tools will bring to the fore questions about the ethics of recovering hidden data that the creator never intended to disclose.

• Grabbing: the rise of Web 2.0 technology means that many forms of individual documentation and expression now have a social, public dimension. Web 2.0 service providers, not individual users, determine the terms of use, and information may be lost when a provider goes out of business, merges with another firm, loses data due to insufficient backup procedures, or suffers a malicious attack. Grabbing (i.e., copying) material found on these sites is going to be the only way to preserve it, and archivists should keep in mind that it likely won’t be possible to provide seamless access to all of the information created by a person, in large part because creators like fragmentation; a person’s digital “papers” might consist of pointers to her online presence from the Web, her e-mail or the storage media used by her computer, and other items.

• Guiding: Archivists will take custody of only a small fraction of personal digital papers, but creators will almost certainly ask us how they can get their data out of the cloud, evaluate terms of service, and preserve their files. Moreover, as professionals we have an ethical obligation to assist them. In an effort to meet this need, Cal is editing a forthcoming publication, I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era. Cal is also active in the Personal Digital Archives Working Group (PDAWG), an informal group that is still in the process of forming. The group will focus on developing and documenting tools for curators of personal digital collections and individuals seeking better control over their own digital materials, drafting of several guidance documents, and engaging research communities that use or may use personal digital materials. The Digital Curation Exchange will provide Web space for the group, which is looking for members and welcomes observers.

I’ve been thinking that archivists have a lot to learn from the field of digital forensics, and I’m glad that I’m not the only one who sees its potential for our work. Moreover, as several of us pointed out in the discussion that followed Cal’s presentation, community-based archives and lone arrangers have a pressing need for the sort of easy-to-use tools that the PADWG is developing. I’ll be watching the work of this group quite closely.

Intrinsic value in the digital era

An interesting short piece in the New Scientist outlines some of the likely consequences of authors' use electronic media to create literary works; be sure to scroll down and read the comments. Among other things:

• Dealers of ephemera are going to find that, although certain physical artifacts (e.g., President Obama's Blackberry) will have cash value, the perfectly replicable electronic files and computer printouts generated by today's writers won't have the same sort of market value as their predecessors' manuscript and typescript drafts, letters, and other materials.
  
• Manuscript curators are, in some instances, going to have to accept authors' assurances regarding the contents of physical media. Moreover, if they accession files such as e-mails, they should prepare themselves for the possibility that some of these files may contain information that could profoundly embarrass donors.

I've long been aware that electronic records lack intrinsic value; owing to the pace of technological change, the short lifespan of storage media, and the proprietary nature of many file formats, we simply can't preserve electronic records in their original form. However, until now, I haven't given much thought to the impact that this lack will eventually have upon the literary ephemera market, which will likely find the 21st century offers slim pickings. This is, of course, not a good situation for the dealers, but they will likely continue to eke out a living peddling materials created by 19th and 20th century writers. It's also bad for literary forgers such as Lee Israel: thanks to the digital age, it's now much easier to counterfeit the work of contemporary authors -- and much harder for them to turn a profit by doing so. Ah, the small ironies of our digital age . . . .

12:12 AM: l'Archivista is blogging

In the September 7, 2008 edition of the New York Times Magazine, Clive Thompson explores the "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy" brought about by social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook's Live Feed feature, which provide users with "constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing." Any archivist worth his or her salt should find this article extremely intriguing. As Thompson notes, most people over 30 simply can't grasp the appeal of these "micro-blogging" services (Twitter limits people to 140 words per post). For the most part, folks born before ca. 1975 view the popularity of these tools as yet another manifestation of the millennial generation's (alleged) narcissism.

However, Thompson emphasizes that something more is going on. Devotees of Live Feed and Twitter are inundated with "snippets of information" about the minutiae of the lives of others. These little pieces of data are, by and large, meaningless in and of themselves. However, "over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of . . . friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting." Users of these services come to know and value the rhythms and textures of friends' and relatives' lives in ways that they never would have otherwise.

This phenomenon should come to no surprise as archivists: we've always recognized that the intellectual value of a records series is sometimes far greater than the sum of its parts and that context is, in many instances, the chief supplier of a record's meaning. It should also propel us to start thinking about ways to preserve at least a sampling of this "micro-blogging" activity: Live Feed, Twitter, and the like promise to be a goldmine for future social and cultural historians, who will be able to examine all of those seemingly random snippets of information for evidence of the habits, pastimes, and preoccupations of early 21st-century people.

Scholars attempting more ambitious reconstructions of early 21st-century life may also find them immensely valuable. Twitter postings remind me in many ways of the terse diary entries of Martha Ballard, the late 18th-/early 19th-century Maine midwife whose journal sat quietly in the stacks of the Maine State Library until Laurel Thacher Ulrich figured out that a close reading of the diary and other available sources would allow her to decipher the entries' meaning and reconstruct the complex, tumultuous world in which Ballard lived. Some discerning 24th-century historian may be able to combine a close analysis of an individual's Live Feed entries with careful examination of other sources and come up with an equally vivid and daring portrait of life and community in our own time.

Of course, Martha Ballard's diary and all of the other records and publications Ulrich consulted exist on a relatively stable medium: paper. The new social networking tools are born digital and, almost invariably, remain digital. Moreover, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are designed to turn a profit, not facilitate creation of the raw materials of history. It's extremely difficult to extract content from the servers maintained by the tools' creators--at least in a meaningful way--and the creators have no compelling reason to make it any easier to do so, at least at the present time.

At present, I don't have any solutions to the problems associated with the commercial nature of most social networking tools, but it seems that I'm not alone. The Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure Program is funding the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, which is examining how to preserve Second Life and video games, but, to the best of my knowledge, no one is tackling the preservation of social networking information. It's about time we as a profession focused a little attention on doing so.

I have lots of other things to say about Thompson's article, and will do so later this week. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to read the article yourself.

Your photos, finally off the shelf . . .

. . . and onto portable media. A couple of days ago, a David Pogue piece in the New York Times focused on ScanMyPhotos.com, which will, for $50.00, digitize 1,000 of your home photos and place them on DVD.

ScanMyPhotos.com isn't the only company providing such services, which might be useful to people who want to produce digital copies of their photos but don't want to take the time to scan thousands of images at home. However, Pogue doesn't discuss the file format and dpi/ppi that ScanMyPhotos uses or the file naming conventions that it employs. According to its Photo Scanning FAQs, bulk scanning customers can receive their images in only one format and resolution (300 dpi JPEG only, at least for bulk scanning customers) and those who want their photos scanned in a specific order, vertical/horizontal orientation preserved, etc. , will have to pay extra. Detailed information about file naming conventions isn't available, but it's pretty evident from the FAQ's that the first image on each DVD is no. 1, the second is no. 2, and so on. Anyone sifting through 1,000 arbitrarily numbered files in search of that wonderful picture of Great Aunt Oona at the 1972 family reunion will have some work to do . . . .

Moreover, although he notes in passing that one advantage of digital photos is that they are "easily backed up," Pogue doesn't explain that the long-term survival of these images will require periodic intervention. Pogue's a sharp guy, and his readership is most likely more technologically savvy than the public as a whole. However, even people who understand, in a general way, that DVDs will eventually become obsolete, that storing backup media right next to the computer isn't a good idea, and that electronic storage media have wildly unpredictable lifespans sometimes fail to plan for the preservation of their data. A paragraph or two about the importance of creating multiple backups, storing backups well away from the computer (in a safe deposit box, at the home of a trusted relative or friend, or at the office), copying files from old media to new in accordance with a predetermined schedule or when replacing one's computer, and remaining abreast of changes in storage technology would have been extremely helpful.

Pogue's absolutely right that digital copies provide an added layer of protection for photos. The parents of a close friend of mine have spent the past few weeks cleaning up after a major house fire, and their family photos were either badly water-damaged or became what Pogue vividly calls "Toxic Photo Soup." They're heartbroken, and I'm sure that they would love to have digital copies of those images--even if said copies were in no discernable order, needed extensive descriptive/indexing work to be truly useful and accessible, and couldn't be used to produce good-quality enlargements. They would also doubtless appreciate some of the extra services (e.g., ability to create albums) that ScanMyPhotos.com and other vendors offer.

Pogue's piece concludes with a brief but very welcome discussion of preservation of photographic prints, and I'm glad that he recognizes the value of keeping the paper originals. I just wish that he had devoted a little attention to the preservation of digital files as well.