Legacy Preservation

Lecture 2 – Digital Preservation 

What happens to our digital presence after we pass? How do we preserve it for future generations? How do we save email, Facebook postings, word documents, and pictures? This presentation asks patrons to consider these questions and then begins to provide the answers. Fulfilling the Library of Congress’ initiative to have libraries teach patrons how to create a digital legacy, this class touches upon the best file formats for long term preservation, how to save email, social media pages, and websites. We’ll cover audio and video files and talk about digitizing old VHS tapes, papers, photographs and books. Archivists and the Library of Congress worry that there will be a gap in the historical record of the generation that built the digital superhighway’s infrastructure. This course attempts to close that gap and provide the first generation of the computer age with the necessary tools to create a digital legacy.