Digital Curation Vignettes: Personal, Academic, and Organizational Digital Information

This panel presents variations on the theme of digital curation by examining the digital information management and preservation practices of three different populations. Personal digital information management, personal collections transferred to institutional repositories, and a digital archiving case in a private organization, offer a wide view of the types of contexts in which digital material is being produced “in the wild.” Across the cases we found that digital record-keeping and preservation practices are not well understood or established, and that a vast amount of digital content created currently is at risk. Other issues, such as an individual’s perception of digital information value, and the feasibility of preservation beyond an individual’s or organization’s lifetime, surfaced as determinants of the current situation. The findings have important implications for appraisal and post-custodial archival strategies. They are also useful for identifying critical decision points when digital curation issues are best addressed