Posted on by Andy Meyer

Personal Digital Archiving – Documents

I’m taking a Digital Preservation class and one of my assignments involves looking at my own personal digital archive. I usually pride myself on being organized and having a pretty minimal and clean digital presence…but formally looking at my stuff made me realize how much digital junk I really had!

So now I’m slowly working through my personal digital archive and am about to tackle my school documents. I thought I would post my thoughts and process on this blog for future reference.

Step 1 – Delete Stuff

I had a lot of junk lurking around from my school days. Old drafts, purely administrative documents, and other worthless things. Delete all of that stuff.

Step 2 – Copy Stuff

This is just an experiment so I’m planning on copying all of my school work (at least for the time being). Therefore I’ll be preserving the original file (in the original file format) as well as an archival master (as a PDF).

Step 3 – Rename Stuff

Right now, I use folders to sort and organize my files. This approach really works for me – but I wanted to explore an alternative way of describing and organizing files. So I’m going to embed more metadata in the filename itself. To do this bulk rename, I’m going use my Mac’s built in File Rename tool. Here is a video:

I’m going to re-work my folder structure into file names following these conventions:

SchoolSchoolYear-Semester#_CourseAbbreviation_FileName

So, for example,

  • NPU1-1_BTS1850_FinalPaper = North Park University, freshman year, first semester, BTS 1850, Final Paper.
  • NPTS2-2_BIBL5111_FinalPaper = North Park Theological Seminary, second year, second semester, BIBL 5111, Final Paper.

I’m planning on adding a readme to this folder – but the designated community for this project is just me and I think I can remember.

Step 4 – Migrate to PDF

I’m not dealing with ancient files here…but I am dealing with Word documents from 2002. So far, all of these files are still readable (and the Word format seems relatively safe for the foreseeable future…) but I wanted to get some experience bulk converting to PDF.

I’m going to use the Mac’s Automator feature again and run a custom AppleScript that I found online here: http://igikorn.com/batch-convert-word-documents-pdf/.

Step 5 – Back Up

At this stage, I have a folder – currently called “Personal Digital Archive” that has all of my school documents with uniform file names in the PDF format. Looks great! I’m planning on backing up these files using my standard back-up method (external hard drive) and I’m also exploring a cloud storage solution that is not DropBox or Google Drive.