Personal archiving

Personal archiving is a branch of archival science and genealogy, focusing on the capture and preservation of individual's personal papers and other documentary output, generally by the individuals concerned. It is often related to family history, when family historians are engaged in capturing their own living history to leave as a legacy for future generations. This branch of family history is allied to the growth in activities such as photograph and record scanning which seek to preserve materials beyond their original life.

Modern personal archiving is often concerned with digital preservation, especially with collating individual's content from social media websites and ensuring the long-term preservation of this. This often deals with migration of digital content, as a means of preservation, rather than the tradition tasks of conservation of paper-based records.

Individuals involved in personal archiving consider all media to be relevant sources as long as this relates to the life, memories and experiences of a person, but a majority of the material is written, photographic, audio or video in nature. Those experiences can relate to their lives, those of living relatives or ancestors. Those engaged in this practice also see their life experiences as a potential source of historical and cultural record, as well as being able to re-live those moments personally. Many see the digital age as bringing an opportunity to leave a richer legacy for future generations.

Cox, Richard, Digital Curation and the Citizen Archivist (PDF) 

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