NDSA:Digital Preservation in a Box

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Correlated with the NDIIPP "Personal Archiving in a Box" activity.

Purpose:

"Digital Preservation in a Box" is designed as a gentle introduction to the concepts of preserving your personal digital information. Our photo albums, letters, home movies and paper documents are a vital link to the past. Personal information we create today has the same value. The only difference is that much of it is now digital. Chances are that you want to keep some digital photos, e-mail, and other files so that you—and your family—can look at them in the future. But preserving digital information is a new concept that most people have little experience with. These resources provide some tips to help make your personal "born digital" information last. The guidance is basic and is meant to be a place to get started. There are organizing four steps to consider when preserving your personal digital information: Identify; Decide; Organize; and Copy. We'll discuss each in detail and provide some resources to help you get started.

This box of resources can be used to provide introductory-level education those who may have little to no knowledge of digital preservation and digital curation issues, to help them with stewarding their own personal digital information, which might include Photographs, Audio, Video, Electronic mail, Personal documents and Web archives.

Audience:

A general audience who routinely create digital information for personal use, including middle, high school, college and introductory LIS/MIS students.

Structure:

The Box structure is modeled after an open-source software project, in that documentation on the Box will be available on a public web site where users can also download a tar, zip or other compressed file that includes all the resources necessary to use the Box. (See this Sourceforge page for an example of the potential look: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxpaint/)

News article about digital preservation may provide nice background reading, but they aren't resources that can be directly used. The Box items should have utility for a presentation. With that in mind, the Box will include items such as slides, videos, posters and handouts. Links to online tutorials or webinars are acceptable.

Box Contents:

• Box content list
• NDSA:How to Use the Resources in this Box (to be written)
• NDSA:Digital Preservation 101 (What is digital preservation and why is it important?)
• NDSA:Glossary
• Brief Introduction to Digitization
• Preservation By Format
• Digital Storage/Cloud Computing/Personal backup options
• NDSA:Resources for Educators
• NDSA:Marketing, Outreach and Event Guidance (Bookmarks, flyers and other promotional materials) (to be written)
• NDSA:Contact list/ones to watch/Bibliography

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