Personal Archiving:
Helping Users Recognize and
Preserve Their Treasures
Lois Hendrickson, Lisa Johnston, Julie Kelly, Jody
Kempf, Amy Neeser, Scott Spicer
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/
Introduction
Lois Hendrickson
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Introduction
"A personal collection is a
sizable aggregate of an
individual's personal traces that
the individual or someone else
has identified and attempts to
manage over time as a
relatively coherent unit in order
to reflect something important
about that individual"
Lois Hendrickson
I. Digital Personal Collections in the Digital Era
Christopher E. Lee, editor. 2011.
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
What kind of "digital stuff" is the
hardest for you to keep track of?
1. Digital Notes
2. E-books
3. Music
4. Photos / Images
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5. Videos
0%
ks
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What kind of "digital stuff" is
hardest for you to keep track of?
Student Results
Amy Neeser
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
What are your biggest issues in
dealing with your "digital stuff"?
Not well named
2.
Stored in too many places
3.
Switching / syncing devices
4.
Losing files permanently
5.
Unable to open files with outdated formats
6.
Hard to share my stuff
7.
Keeping stuff private
8.
Stuff too large to store or share
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
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What are your biggest issues in
dealing with your "digital stuff"?
Student Results
Amy Neeser
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Discuss with partner “your top
issues / problems”
Discussion
Amy Neeser
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
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Where are your files now?
Are they structured?
Multiple devices?
What needs improvement?
How do students want to learn?
Discussion
Amy Neeser
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Why Personal Archiving?
Education around information management
skills will work across the spectrum of user
(Freshman to faculty) and level of need
(personal photos to research data).
Transferable
Skills
Panel Presentation: Lisa Johnston
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
How Do We Help?
Examples of Data Management Education:
Introduction to Data Management for
Graduate Students
Creating a Data Management Plan for
your Grant Application
Data Management Course for Civil
Engineers (online)
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Transferable
Skills
Panel Presentation: Lisa Johnston
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Similarities with Personal Archiving:
Creating good file names (metadata)
directory structure so you can find stuff
backup your files
organize your notes (lab notebook)
share your data (software)
archiving and preserving files
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Rebrand Library Efforts
Information Management
(ranging from personal archiving to
research data management)
Transferable
Skills
Panel Presentation: Lisa Johnston
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Personal Archiving is a great starting point
to teach information management skills that
all users can continue to use throughout
their career, whether its managing research
data or organizing personal information like
pdfs and photos.
•
First Steps
o
o
Staff
Education
and Support
Panel Presentation: Jody Kempf
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
•
Increase Staff Interest
and Buy-In
Staff Education and
Support
Personal Archiving
BootCamp
Steps in Archiving
your Personal
Objects
Panel Presentation: Jody Kempf
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Identify
Organize
Find/relocate
Save/share
Evaluating usefulness of
software by applying
criteria
http://z.umn.edu/photomatrix
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Staff
Personal
Archiving
Bootcamp
Panel Presentation: Jody Kempf
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spree2010/4961028342/
Library of Congress workflow
PDF Class
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Identify
Organize
Read
Save/share
Find/relocate
Julie Kelly
Address top problems
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•
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Too many locations
Syncing between devices
Inadequate file names
PDF Class
Julie Kelly
Citation managers
have become
PDF storage tools
PDF Class
Julie Kelly
Mendeley
Zotero
RefWorks
Roadmap
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PDF Class
Julie Kelly
Organization and workflow 101
File names and file structure
Storage options
Three possible workflows
Think-pair-share about current
problems
Homework
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http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Takes time to select a workflow
File renaming is not optional
File names
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PDF Class
Julie Kelly
Unique
Consistent
Scannable
Fall into useful order
Storage
•
DropBox vs. Google Drive
Search vs. hierarchy
Deal with your paper backlog
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Scenarios
Simple file storage
Mendeley
Combination of tools
PDF Class
Julie Kelly
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Zotero/ZotPad
Read/Annotate
Storage
Online version of the workshop
is forthcoming
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
Set up a Zotero account for syncing online and to each computer you use
Use Zotero to download citations and PDFs
Use the Zotfile add-in to rename the PDF and send it to Dropbox
Suggested Workflow
On your tablet, use iAnnotate to open and annotate the PDF from Dropbox
Julie Kelly
On your desktop, use Zotfile to pull the annotated PDF back to Zotero
Use the Zotero Word add-in to add citations to your documents and generate
bibliographies
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Course Integrated
Personal
Archiving (photo)
Panel Presentation: Scott Spicer
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
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First year seminar on the topic of
visual anthropology (ANTH 1905)
Discussion/activity on current photo
management practice
Discussion/activity on potential
strategies for improving personal
archiving approaches
UMN Personal Photo Archiving:
(http://z.umn.edu/photomanagement)
photo matrix:
(http://z.umn.edu/photomatrix)
Conclusions
Lois Hendrickson
The Picture Collection. Handshaking. Taryn Simon.
Examines how NYPL photographic images are classified
and cataloged....back to a time where there were no
search engines, and highlighting the invisible hand behind
the seemingly neutral systems of image gathering.
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
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Conclusions
Lois Hendrickson
http://z.umn.edu/personalarchiving
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Transferrable baseline skills
Government mandated data
curation (NIH/NSF)
Integrated into existing and future
tools (Evernote)
Exponential growth of information
and data - need to harness it to
make the right decisions at the
right time
Scholarship - Digital Humanities
Preserving our own digital
materials