HomeFirst Digital Lives Research Conference: Personal Digital Archives for the 21st Century
Introduction
Helping to enable worldwide and interdisciplinary collaboration in securing personal digital archives for all people whose lives are increasingly digital.
Research Conferences 2.0
The first Digital Lives research conference will be a participatory and collaborative one, bringing together researchers, professionals, creators, enthusiasts and the digital public. The conference will be engaging colleagues beyond the project, and individuals in the broader community, in the research process itself.
Participants will be invited to contribute to the project. We shall be seeking feedback, suggestions, opinions and experiences from all those in attendance.
Perspective
The origin of personal computers in the mid 1970s and the arrival of the graphical user interface in the 1980s were instrumental in the evolution of personal digital archives; but it was the increasing integration of these computers within networks, most especially the internet, that yielded the most radical and still emerging changes in personal archives. The arrival of email and the world wide web transformed the way people communicate, and the widespread ability – gained in the last 5 years or so - to readily store and transfer files sufficiently large for high resolution images and sounds and moving images means that the nature of personal archiving has changed for ever.
No longer can the family documents, photographs and other memorabilia merely be boxed and stacked in the attic. At the same time, there are new opportunities for personal and family memory and for new uses of personal archives.
Themes
In future, Digital Lives conferences will likely want to focus on specific themes and particular aspects of this new research field. For this first conference the aim is to take the broadest perspective in order to map out the issues, the challenges and, above all, the opportunities.
A central question of this conference is how can repositories – national, regional and local - help academics and all people whose lives are becoming increasingly digital, to secure, preserve and organise their personal digital archives for themselves and for their families. In some cases this might ultimately be in readiness for future transfer to a repository where appropriate; in others it might be for longterm holding by the family.
Initially these archives will be for individuals’ own use. It is anticipated, however, that people who feel in control of their personal archives - robustly secure and well organised - may choose to make some of the contents of their personal digital archives available for research and other uses, sometimes in anonymous form.
The conference seeks to help enable – through the use of personal archives – the continuing contemplation and better understanding of personal lives by current and future generations, in accordance with the varying wishes of individuals concerned.
Three Days in February
Day 1
Synthesis for Digital Lifelines: Practicalities, Professionalities and
Potentialities
Day 2
Personal Information Lifecycles: Perspectives from Creator, Curator,
Consumer
Day 3
Living Online and Personal Digital Archives in the Wild
There will be tours of various technical and research facilities of the British Library.
More about this Conference:
Introduction