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Preserving Personal Digital Files
A University of Michigan Library Instructional Technology Workshop
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rev: 8/2/12
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PRESERVING PERSONAL DIGITAL FILES ......................................................................... 1
By Sarah Wingo ............................................................................................................................................. 1
Why Digital Preservation? ............................................................................................. 3
Risks to digital files:....................................................................................................................................... 3
The Basics of digital Preservation: ............................................................................... 4
Identify: ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
Decide: ........................................................................................................................................................ 4
Organize: .................................................................................................................................................... 4
Backup: ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
The Finer Details: .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Migration: ................................................................................................................................................... 5
Deciding if Migration is necessary: ......................................................................................................... 5
Advanced organization: ................................................................................................................................ 6
Metadata: .................................................................................................................................................... 6
How to add metadata: .............................................................................................................................. 7
Citation management tools ...................................................................................................................... 7
Preservation by File type: ............................................................................................. 8
Text Files: ....................................................................................................................................................... 8
.pdf vs. .pdf/a: ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Image Files: .................................................................................................................................................. 10
Compression: ........................................................................................................................................... 10
JPG vs. TIFF ........................................................................................................................................... 11
Digital Audio ................................................................................................................................................ 14
Digital Video ................................................................................................................................................ 15
Personal Electronic Mail ............................................................................................................................ 17
Websites: ....................................................................................................................................................... 18
Backup: ........................................................................................................................ 19
The basics: ................................................................................................................................................ 19
Digital Storage Choices .......................................................................................................................... 19
The cloud ................................................................................................................................................. 20
What to look for when evaluating a cloud service ............................................................................. 20
Online “cloud” backup solutions ......................................................................................................... 21
Strategy ..................................................................................................................................................... 23
Further reading: ........................................................................................................... 24