Personal Digital Archiving Resources
Tufts Archival Research Center often provides advice and guidance on personal digital archiving and record keeping to all members of the University community, including students, student groups and organizations, faculty and staff. We can help with preservation strategies for a wide variety of material. Please contact Digital Archivist Sally Benny with questions.
The Basics:
The 3-2-1 rule:
- Make three copies
- Have at least two of the copies on two different types of media
- Keep one copy in a different location from where you live / work
Helpful tips:
- Identify where you have your information.
- Decide what is important to you.
- Get organized. Designate folders for certain types of materials or events.
- Make copies of your data.
- Understand the trade-offs of placing objects in various websites, etc., and what is helping you accomplish digital preservation.
- Embed extractable metadata whenever possible.
Preferred file formats:
Resource: Library of Congress Recommended Formats: https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/index.html
- Text: PDF
- Still images: TIFF, JPEG
- Moving images: MOV, MP4
- Sounds: WAVE, MP3
- Tabular data: CSV
Useful Tools:
- Google, download your data (email, hangouts, drive, calendar, etc.): https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
- Twitter archive download: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20170160#
- Facebook archive download: https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467
- Webrecorder: https://webrecorder.io/
Resources:
Personal Digital Archiving:
- LOC Personal Digital Archiving Day Kit: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/padKit/index.html
- Bryn Mawr LibGuide: https://guides.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/pdad
Digital archives & preservation:
- LOC digital preservation blog – The Signal: https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/
- SAA Electronic Records Section blog – bloggERS: https://saaers.wordpress.com/
- Digital Preservation Management Workshop Tutorial: http://www.dpworkshop.org/dpm-eng/eng_index.html
- Documenting the Now: http://www.docnow.io/
Contact us at archives@tufts.edu!