Leslie Johnston11/14/2013

Personal Digital Archiving Initiatives at the Library of Congress

The Problem We Must Advise On

Institutions and individuals use similar technologies

…and have similar stakes

Photographs Email

Documents

Audio Video

Websites

21st Century digital valuables

Plus:- social media profiles- game characters- network of business

associates that you may have built up over time on business networking sites

- …and more artifacts of your online life.

All of these materials are part of the life histories of individuals, and all will be coming to cultural heritage institutions as part of personal collections.

Traditional storage of material valuables

We can ignore paper photos and documents for years and trust that we can likely enjoy them any time in the future.

There are additional and different inherent risks for digital storage

It’s easy to lose track of digital items, scattered on websites, thumb drives, and CDs.

Each digital storage medium has hidden vulnerabilities and a limited lifespan.

Each digital storage medium becomes obsolete as technology improves and files could get trapped on obsolete media.

Obsolescence

Email, social media, cloud storage and other online services can go out of business or could be hacked.

The Risk of Loss

What NDIIPP at the

Library of Congress is Doing

Digital Preservation has a long history at the Library, cemented in the creation of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program in 2000.

Five years ago the Library recognized that individuals are amassing huge personal digital collections, and are unaware of the potential

risks and threats to their digital items.

Why is the Library of Congress Doing This?

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NDIIPP Personal Digital Archiving

Libraries/archives have reasons to engage with individuals about personal digital preservation

May bring in personal digital collections

Answer patron questions

Raise institutional visibility with the general public

Providing even basic information is very helpful

Public Events ALA Preservation Week

Webinars and “Personal Archiving Day” events Public Libraries

Events and Public Library Association blog series Personal Digital Archiving Day Kit

http://digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/padKit/index.html

National Book Festival

NDIIPP Personal Digital Archiving

Brochureshttp://digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/documents/

PA_All_brochure.pdf

Videoshttp://digitalpreservation.gov/multimedia/videos/

personalarchiving.html

Quizhttp://digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/quiz/

Articleshttp://digitalpreservation.gov/documents/lc-digital-preservation.pdf

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/

NDIIPP Personal Digital Archiving

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Other NDIIPP Personal Digital Archiving OutreachThe Signal BlogThe Signal Bloghttp://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/category/personal-archiving/

TwitterTwitterhttps://twitter.com/ndiipp

FacebookFacebookhttps://www.facebook.com/digitalpreservation

General Advice We Give

Personal Archiving is Digital Preservation at its Most Basic

Identify where you have files/informationIdentify where you have files/information

Decide which is most importantDecide which is most important

Organize what you selectOrganize what you select

Make copies and store them in different placesMake copies and store them in different places

Put a copy of media, written inventories, passwords with Put a copy of media, written inventories, passwords with your important papers in a secure locationyour important papers in a secure location

Create new media copies every five years or when Create new media copies every five years or when necessary to avoid data lossnecessary to avoid data loss

Personal digital archiving best practices are based on our institutional digital archiving practices.

INSTITUTIONALFile ingestion

Verification/checksum

Naming/Identification

Organization

Back up

Migrate to new storage

PERSONALFile accumulation

Making sure they’re OK

Re-naming to help find them

Organization

Back up

Migrate to new storage

1. Identify what you want to save and decide what is most important to you

2. Organize your digital possessions3. Save copies in different places4. Move your collection to a current storage medium once

every five to seven years

The Basics of Personal Digital Archiving Advice

Organize

Descriptive folder and file names help you and others find things.

BackupCopy the folder to at least two different types of media/storage

devices.

The professional photographer’s 3 - 2 - 1 rule: Make 3 copies Save at least 2 onto different types of storage media Save 1 in a different location from where you live

Verify that the files copied over.

Spot check your files and open a few to verify that they copied over intact, especially the more important ones.

Save copies in different locations.

If you backup to an online storage service – “The Cloud” – also keep a backup on a local storage device.

Manage

Actively manage your collection.Confirm that you know where all your files and media are.Check that the files and media are still readable.Move your collection to a current storage medium once

every five to seven years, well before your current file formats

and storage device become obsoleteWhen planning your estate, let a loved one know where you store your important documents. Supply

passwords, if needed.

Case Study: Digital Photos

Explain the Process of Taking Digital Photos

The camera:

1. saves the photo as a file

2. names the file

3. inserts technical information inside the file

4. saves the file in a JPEG format (most consumer cameras) or RAW (some professional cameras).

The device/camera saves the photo as a file to internal storage media.

Advise to get photo files off the device as soon as possible and back them up.

Explain the Process of Saving Digital Photos

The camera names the file.

Advise that naming the file with a descriptive name it can help you identify the photo without displaying it.

Explain the Process of Saving Digital Photos

The camera embeds technical information within the photo file.

Explain that photo editing software will enable them to add a description into the photo file. But some photo-editing and photo-managing software instead links the descriptions to the software and not in the photo files.

Explain the Concept of Metadata for Digital Photos

Advise on the metrics for quality, such as PPI and compression.

Explain the need for multiple copies of photos for different purposes.

Advise that people make an active decision about the quality they want or need for their photos based upon use. For the web: smaller, lower resolution files. For prints: larger, high-resolution files.

Explain that when they upload photos to some websites, such as photo sharing or social media websites, they may get compressed to reduce the size of the file, which will lower the quality of the photo by reducing the number of pixels.

Explain that once a photo is compressed and pixels are removed they can never regain the original quality.

That’s why everyone should always safely preserve their originals and work with copies.

Explain the Concept of Quality for Digital Photos

Scan the average 4"x6" to 8”x 10” photo at 300 dpi/ppi.

Scan slides and tiny photos at 1800 dpi/ppi.

Explain that when you have a choice of which file format to save the scanned photo or slide, JPEG is still the standard most often used.

Point out that some websites will only let you upload JPEGs.

Advise to always choose the highest quality when saving files.

Provide Guidelines on Scanning Digital Photos

And Now to Discuss

For detailed information, please visit:http://digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/

For a reprint book chapter overview, go tohttp://digitalpreservation.gov/documents/lc-digital-preservation.pdf

Leslie Johnstonlesliej@loc.gov