Several years ago the New York Times published the article “Plan your Digital Legacy, and Update Often” about a little-emphasized pitfall of our digital age: without ongoing curation of digital videos, photos, passwords and other items on computer hard-drives and devices, those items may be
lost forever when the owner passes away. Indeed, without a digital legacy plan most personal archives will be in shambles. Several organizations have come together to help people with their personal archives, which is among a myriad of issues surrounding preservation in general. The culmination of this effort is National Preservation Week every year in late April.
Occurring between April 21-28, Preservation Week is sponsored by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association. It was established to assist non-specialists and laypeople with preservation, and offers many free webinars, online tutorials and tip-sheets for best practices in preservation and conservation techniques. In celebration, the library is offering seminars at both its Callaway and Columbia branches. These seminars, Preserving Your Memorabilia, offer the opportunity to come learn about the proper care and storage of old family books, photographs and documents for future generations to enjoy.
In addition to these classes, the library also has many different resources that might assist you with your personal preservation needs. “How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn how to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia & Genealogical Records,” by Denise May-Levenick is a layperson’s guide to preserving those priceless items that you might be storing in your basement or attic. The book describes strategies for
determining what to keep, what to donate and how to digitize family records. “Personal Archiving: Preserving Our Digital Heritage” is a compendium of essays written about issues surrounding digital legacy and is still a classic book in the field.
We also have several books written specifically about preserving photographs. “How to Archive Family Photos: A Step-by-Step Guide to Organize and Share Your Photos Digitally,” another book written by Denise May Levenick, is a recent title that discusses the process of managing photos through digitization. Chapters include picking the right scanner for your project, determining what photos to keep, and using current photo editing technology to enhance photographs. “Preserving your Family Photographs” by Maureen Taylor is also an excellent primer on the basics behind preserving your hard-copy photographs and is currently in its second printing. In addition to the correct preservation methods, this book also discusses best practices for scrapbooking procedures.
As part of its comprehensive offerings of technology classes, the library also offers several classes that assist patrons with the archiving of their memorabilia and personal digital items. Personal Archiving is a class offered on a monthly basis and gives patrons strategies on preserving their digital memories on their phones, tablets and other devices. The class also offers a demonstration of the scanning equipment in our technology lab, the Studio, and patrons can schedule future scanning sessions for their physical documents and photos. Managing our files and folders on our computers is also a big issue — the library offers the class Basic File Organization for organizing your files on your Windows computer. This class is also offered on a monthly basis.
Please don’t forget to put our Preserving Your Memorabilia class on your calendar! The class is offered at the Callaway County Library on Tuesday April 24 from 6-7:30 p.m. and at the Columbia Public Library Saturday April 28 from 2-3:30 p.m. The Columbia Public Library class is registration-only and space is limited. Be sure to also check out all the great resources surrounding Preservation Week on the American Library Association’s website: http://www.ala.org/alcts/preservationweek.
