It's Preservation Week!

This week, April 24–30, is Preservation Week for 2016.  While the primary focus is for libraries, archives, and other formal repositories to think about the conditions and preservation needs of their collections, it is a good time for everyone to consider what they have that they would like to have last a long time.  For modern genealogists, this can easily encompass original documents, books, photographs and slides, recorded interviews, family movies, and digital media, whether converted from the previous formats or natively digital.  You might also have clothing and other physical heirlooms that can't really be digitized.

The American Library Association has a page full of resources for Preservation Week (and the whole year!).  You can find information on how to preserve your items and on disaster recovery (which I hope you never need to use).  Two free Webinars are offered this year, "Reformatting Audiotape" on April 26 and "Preserving Your Digital Life" on April 28  Also available are links to previous years' presentations, such as ""Preservation of Family Photographs", "Family Textiles", and "Disaster Preparedness", all free.

If you would like to host a Preservation Week event, there's a link to information for that.  There's even a link for preservation geared to military families!

Don't you feel motivated to go out and buy a bunch of archival boxes for your documents now?

New Resource for Personal Digital Archiving

Now that more and more material is electronic -- e-mail, scanned photos, databases -- have you struggled with the idea of how to maintain and store all of your information?  You are not alone.  I know I become frustrated every time one of my programs tells me it needs to be updated to the newest and greatest version.  Plus I try to keep up with the current preferred formats for saving media, such as mp4 versus flv.  And then you have to worry about your files being lost, whether it's due to an outdated program, damage to your computer, or even something as simple as not being able to find a file.

Well, someone at the Library of Congress apparently has considered those same problems, because they have created a new free electronic publication, Perspectives on Personal Digital Archiving.  The publication's content covers three general areas:  guidance (e.g., tips on preservation and organization), personal reflections (stories on saving and losing data), and outreach (presentations, events, etc.).  The e-book grew out of the many posts on the Digital Preservation blog.

The e-book is available online as a downloadable PDF.