[Personal_archives] curation and stewardship of digital personal belongings

[Dean, Heather]

Hello All,
Thanks to Cathy for these thought-provoking articles and to Catherine, Heather, and Rodney for kicking-off discussion this week.  I appreciate Cathy's point that most of us would view curation as more appropriate for "museums" or "archives" rather than for our own "stuff" (to pick up on a thread from Catherine's first post).  I'm really fascinated by the role of "curation" and "stewardship" for preserving electronic records since it seems like more than ever creators will have to share these responsibilities, to some degree, in order to ensure ongoing access to their "personal digital belongings."  I wonder if this issue of curation - and its implications for "benign neglect" versus "naïve archiving" - has motivated some institutions to develop guidelines, based on professional standards, for creators interested in preserving their electronic documents (which may perhaps offer an alternative to "benign neglect"/"naïve archiving").  I'm curious to hear from others if their institutions have developed such guidelines and, if so, how such guidelines have been received by creators so far.

And connected to this, I'm also fascinated by the "notion of value" since I can't help but connect this to appraisal, and while on some level we all appraise our stuff to a degree (whether actively or passively), making these decisions could also be seen as a component of curating one's belongings.

-Heather
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