Digital Archiving in Family History

Protecting the Digital Assets of Historical Research

Recording now available in the Community Forum

From our early experiences with floppy disks and spinning hard drives, many of us learned habits that would protect our work. We've adopted file syncs like Dropbox, system backup software like Time Machine, and online services like Backblaze. But... when you work on your precious family history records, what are you doing to archive your originals, the materials you've received from others, or new pieces you've created?

Are the distinctions between data SYNCs, BACKUPS, and ARCHIVES a little murky? No worries. I've got ya covered. This workshop will help you understand the important variables to consider in implementing an archiving workflow as part of your routine family history work. You can't protect against every eventuality, but a few principles can help protect irreplaceable originals.

To the extent that we're focused on family history as it moves into a digital realm, we'll refer briefly to archiving as it applies to image and document files you're digitizing. This is a topic better covered by Kathy Stone in her Kathy's Corner series, however.

This workshop will primarily focus on the archiving of digital files including not only images and documents but also media like video and audio files. I'll do my best to demystify a range of common local and cloud-based options. We'll talk not only about best practices but also about how to weave these kinds of things into your daily routine.

Your presenter, Barbara Tien, is one of the co-founders at Ponga.com where she co-hosted Zoomin' events and webinars. She was also the product and customer champion for the innovative platform. She is not selling or representing any vendor or service, so the opinions are her own.

In the spirit of community, we welcome insights and advice from members of our community, many of whom bring in expertise as professional photo organizers or vendor affiliates. This is not a venue for product or service pitches, however.

The program was presented on July 27th and is available as a recording in the free community forum. Register to express interest in the program and gain access to the forum if you don't already have it.

If this is your first time registering for one of our programs, we will also add you to my email list for community updates and invite you to the free community forum. Watch for updates and an invitation to the Podia platform we use for the forum from projectkin.org@gmail.com.