[Personal_archives] Nancy.Marrelli at concordia.ca has sent you a New Scient...

[RICKBARRY at aol.com]

Thank you, Nancy for sharing this pearl that I tucked in a file to read  
later on and just got around to. Truly fascinating article that raises issues  
increasingly key to personal archive management, for one's self and for 
donor  recipients, using case material and commentary from Jeremy Leighton 
John,  curator of e-manuscripts ("eMSS") at the British Library in London. He 
offers  some practical strategies for dealing with those issues, some learned 
from the  computer forensics field. It should be required reading to people 
considering  leaving their digital archives for heirs to deal with or for 
donating  to an institution, and similarly for curators to raise in seeking 
agreement with  individuals while they are alive in proposing that they gift 
their collections  at a later time. I imagine that in most cases people don't 
give much thought to  the subject while alive, as we know many people do 
with paper files, leaving  potentially a mess for their spouses and children 
to sort through or simply to  discard altogether, including some that could 
be important to the family or even  society later on. Other lessons come to 
mind reading this piece, not  the least being its value to the living in 
regularly destroying (in some cases  possibly more than just deleting) files 
that they do not wish to be passed on or  donated and, conversely, the 
importance of ensuring that valuable papers, e.g.,  with intellectual property 
rights significance, are not destroyed. John's  interesting discussion as a 
curator on the subject donor's PC includes  the possible need for improving the 
organization of the donor's files  while not disturbing the originals. He 
does not address the subject of "original  order" in this article, a subject 
that I've thought about over the years,  especially whild contemplating a 
paper on the materiality of digital records,  including whether original order 
even applies to many digital collections --  usually coming down in favor of: 
yes, there is original order there, but in the  absence of well thought 
out, consistently applied and preserved use of  multi-level directories for 
maintaining such records. Again, for living  potential donors who believe that 
their personal/professional records may be of  some future value, this 
observation may be a reminder to clean up their act  while they can. Personally, 
I have multi-level, separate directies on my PC  for my (proprietary 
software) browser, email, word processor, images,  videos, etc., i.e., by 
technology rather than content -- not practicing what I  and other colleagues have 
preached for years for large collections, or at  least for their appraisal and 
disposition management, but I do so purely  for personal convenience. It's 
easy for me to crosswalk among my  directories, which are in part mirrored 
to one another, though certainly not  completely so. But it would be 
difficult for anyone else to do so. Fortunately  no curator or family member will 
have to deal with that in my case, since I've  told my wife to have one of the 
kids take a sledge hammer to my hard drives. If  it is something of 
potential family value, I'll print it out (I actually said  that!) before I croak.
 
I don't recall any discussion of this article on this list, but I found it  
an excellent read in a time when personal records are increasingly digital 
and  highly recommend it, even for your "hold and read later" file.
 
Regards,
 
Rick
 
 
In a message dated 5/8/2011 7:49:14 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
Nancy.Marrelli at concordia.ca writes:

Your  friend thought you should see this article on newscientist.com  today.

Digital legacy: Respecting the digital  dead
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20445

Some articles may  require a login, available free to all subscribers to 
New Scientist  magazine.

You can subscribe at  http://www.newscientist.com/subscribe.

Their message:
Interesting  item on digital personal archives.

NewScientist.com is the world's  leading online science and technology news 
service, with a global network of  award-winning journalists. Visit 
www.newscientist.com now for constantly  updated and authoritative reporting that's 
both fast and  fascinating.
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