Personal Digital Archiving

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:

Resources:

Personal Digital Archiving:

Digital archives & preservation:

 

Contact us at archives@tufts.edu