Managing digital assets is now a critical part of our society. I wanted to put together some notes for a presentation on personal digital archiving that I’ve proposed for the Covenant’ MidWinter gathering of pastors. If this proposal is accepted, this post will be a first, rough draft of the content I hope to cover there.

Summarize and Create Inventory

The first step is managing your digital assets is answering a serious of related questions:

• What kind of “stuff” do I have? Brainstrom a list of all of the digital assets you have created or have used
• Where do I have this stuff? That is, are the files stored on a computer? Flash Drive? Website? Google Drive? Dropbox? Facebook photo album? Personal email account? Text messages?
• What are the special considerations relevant to your collection? Privacy concerns in some of the correspondence and paperwork? Intellectual property issues in worship lyrics or subscription content? What sort of records does the church expect to retain after you leave?

Having summarized your digital assets at a high level, I would suggest taking a more detailed inventory of your most important files. Textual documents like sermon notes and lesson plans as well as audiovisual material are likely the most common file types to manage. Take a detailed look at your computer and any other sources you identified. There are a number of good (and free) inventory tools out there that provide a high level overview of your computer’s hard drive – see the Lifehacker post for both Mac and PC disk space analyzers.

At this point, start noticing things like file and folder structure as well as file naming conventions. Notice if your files are grouped and sorted in a helpful or are they scattered across many devices with no sense of order.

Write and Execute a Retention Plan

Now that you have a better grasp on (1) what digital assets you current manage as well as (2) where they are stored and how they are organized, you can begin creating a retention plan. There is a lot to consider at this stage but here are some important considerations and best practices:

• Discard before organizing
• Follow consistent file naming conventions
• Embed metadata into the file name (instead of relying on folder)
• Migrate to current file formats when needed

Maintain and Preserve

Part of digital preservation is creating good habits and systems. For example, scattering meeting minutes across several notebooks, your personal laptop, and Google Drive is much more difficult to manage the a single platform. So create some policies for yourself.

Digital preservation is an evolving art and science, but there are a few best practices that can be implemented at any level:

• Avoid “strange” file formats – things that are outdated and/or proprietary are much harder to manage. Consider migrating existing context into an open and standardized format.
• LOCKSS – Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe. Back up your main computer with another storage device like an external harddrive. Consider also using cloud storage like Dropbox for additional safety. The long story is don’t trust one device or service – back-up your digital life in a diversity of platforms and modes to increase the chances of long term access.