Book Review: Personal Archiving: Preserving Our Digital Heritage

Abstract

In the very first paragraph of chapter 1, Jeff Ubois of the MacArthur Foundation presents for us the overlying objective of this book, a genuine compendium of approaches to understanding and dealing with our digital selves: “By helping to build a common understanding of personal archives, this book supports collaboration between diverse types of institutions and individuals working in different disciplines” (1). This is key, because it seems to me that many of us have been looking at the problems associated with organizing and maintaining long-term access to all that we create and record and share, and that we are still trying to define what the “personal digital archives” is. But for the sake of so many—ourselves as individuals, our families and future generations, the research community, and the collective memory of what builds every nation—the need to protect the digital legacy is an imperative, starting now, and starting with this book.