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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=375090414-28042009>I guess I can't help but think that the whole issue of
being able to relate fully to the document in order to be able to appraise,
curate or destroy it has something to do with the inherent intagability of
digital records. Part of people not knowing what to do, shirking their
responsibilities for weeding and arranging their digital assets might also have
to do with the fact that these records do not reside in our world. If
they are deleted, it is like they never were. We do not have to take out
the garbage (or recycling), light a match and later clean up the mess.
They are easily ignored because they are not physically there, they are equally
less easily missed because they were never physically here (although this might
change with the advent of digital picture frames, for example). The ease
with which these records are created and manipulated gives them a further
fluidity, unreality, replacability and perhaps even a sense of
super-mundaneness. They are a bit halucinatory and perhaps this is the way
the human mind chooses to deal with proliferant physically unreal
materials? In this way, perhaps the computer crash is just a nightmare to
get over. </SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><BR> </DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> personal_archives-bounces@mailman.yale.edu
[mailto:personal_archives-bounces@mailman.yale.edu] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Rodney
Carter<BR><B>Sent:</B> April 28, 2009 9:56 AM<BR><B>To:</B> Cathy
Marshall<BR><B>Cc:</B> personal_archives@mailman.yale.edu<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re:
[Personal_archives] distinctions among user types and benignneglect as
stewardship mode<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>The notion of neglect *as* stewardship is an interesting one and I think
highlights the importance in understanding the psychology of records
creators/keepers that Catherine flagged at the start of yesterday's
discussion.<BR><BR>Certainly, for physical records, there are times when,
despite any logical or rational argument for keeping something, after performing
appraisal on certain records and seeing no long term administrative,
legal, or historical value there is a reluctance to destroy the documents. For
records that are a significant age or fit into a personal interest this can
often be the case. Anonymous photographs in my archives certainly have a home,
despite my frequent inability to make a solid case for their archival value.
Perhaps we rely on technological failures and fires & floods to make those
hard choices for us. We cannot bear to get rid of the records ourselves but we
know subconsciously that we'd be better off without them.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Heather D draws our attention to the connection of value to appraisal. The
trouble we can get into, particularly when dealing with personal material that
we cannot help but relate to subjectively, there is personal history in relation
to the items which can lead to holding on to some material and hastily
destroying others. Value, including archival value, can be said to be "radically
contingent" (following axiologish Barbara Hernnstein Smith). In this
articulation, the value resides neither wholly in the object nor in the
viewing subject but arises as a product of the interaction of the subject
and object at a particular moment in time. As the properties of the object
change, as the psychological state of the
subject shifts, and as the environment of that the interaction takes
place in alters, the value will change over time. When weeding personal
collections - I am thinking of boxes of memorabilia from highschool or college,
for example - things that were of the utmost value at the time are of little or
no value now, if not entirely meaningless as the context is forgotten. This
process, what Cathy has highlighted as re-encountering, is, as she writes, much
more difficult with digital artifacts. We perhaps are still tied to the tangible
and it is much easier to delete a folder on the computer than it is to throw out
a file of papers or photos in the physical world (at least for some - there are
those who relish in "cleaning out their office" - four words that send shivers
down my spine at work).<BR><BR>If we agree that value of records can shift over
time, I am very interested to hear more about the idea of "intrinsic metadata"
(from "Rethinking..." Pt. 2, end of section 2). Are there technological
solutions to chart how things are used, moved and modified over time.
Certainly this information would be wonderful to have for physical records as
well, but if there are ways to have this information automatically generated all
the better. <BR></DIV>
<DIV>I'd like to thank Rick for his message and its detailed advice. I was
certainly armed with more knowledge about "what to do in the case of..." than I
was last thursday and armed with that I placed a call to the IT guys who were
looking after things. Thankfully, it seems that the problem was not with the
harddrive itself and I am told they were able to save the data and tranfer it to
a new harddrive. We'll see what state my files are in when they arrive here in a
few moments. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Which makes me return to what Cathy said about moving on after a fire.
Speaking for myself, and others who are similarly tech-impaired, when a crash
occurs or "something mysterious happens" and things disappear (I blame the
gremlins in my computer) there is often a fatalism associated with it. We throw
up our arms and say "what can we possibly do!?!? It is lost forever". We don't
have the knowledge to even begin to know how to approach the situation, similar
to what we would do in the face of a fire. Throw your arms up and move on and
attempt to rebuild. Which, of course, makes the preventative measures all the
more important. But I am wondering if the same fatalism prevails - harddrives
crash, cds & dvds fail, ISPs go out of existence and take our data with
them. I wonder if the focus can ever be put on data saving measures in a
positive light, particularly when there are folks who capitalize on generating
fear in order to sell back up devices and services. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a distributed storage model that Cathy highlights there is even more
difficulty as people must not only be worried about local harddrives but things
"in the cloud" as well.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Sorry if this was a bit all over the place. A great deal going through my
head this morning.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>All the best</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Rod</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Cathy Marshall <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:cathymar@microsoft.com"
target=_blank>cathymar@microsoft.com</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">
<DIV lang=EN-US link="blue" vlink="purple">
<DIV>
<P>Hi all,</P>[...]
<P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Rodney—I'm sorry to hear about your recent
crash—I'm going to say something now, and I'm curious what you'll think about
it:</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"></SPAN> </P>
<P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">I've noticed a somewhat puzzling pattern:
people seem to be relying on disk crashes, technology failure, and periodic
obsolescence as a way of pruning their collections. It’s not that loss doesn’t
bother them; it’s rather that loss makes their collections more tractable. The
accumulated weight of these digital belongings is swept away, so that the home
computer users can focus their attention on the present. This cycle of
accumulation and accidental loss might underlie explanations that consumers
offer for failing to backup their computers. In the end, people may be unhappy
about data loss, but they shrug it off, all too frequently saying exactly the
same thing: </SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"></SPAN> </P>
<P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">“I mean, if we would’ve had a fire, you just
move on.”</SPAN></P>
<P> </P>
<P>All for tonight. Let me know what you think.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>best,</P>
<P>Cathy</P>
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