Resources for managing your digital stuff |
Toolkit for saving your digital treasure
Here is where I share the tools and resources that will help you manage your digital stuff. This page will always be a work in progress. I'll add to this list as I learn new things, so it will keep on growing.
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I hope you find some of these things helpful. Feel free to get in touch if you have any recommendations for things you have come across.
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As always, don’t get stuck doing the research! It is better to just have a go and learn from experience.
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Good luck, and have fun!
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By Zed A. Shaw
I love this brilliant introduction to using the command line to manage your digital files. It is aimed at beginners, is super approachable, and has useful exercises for you to practice. It is actually an appendix to the book Learn Python the Hard Way, so have a look at that too.
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Guides on how to manage your digital records
By Library of Congress
The US Library of Congress publish useful guidelines on how to care for your digital possessions. Check these out for help with email, digital photos, AV, websites and more.
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Personal Digital Preservation: Photographs and Video
By Richard Wright
This article is a deep-dive into how one guy approached archiving his digital photos and videos. It is published by the Digital Preservation Coalition, who do tons of research into saving digital treasures. They have released loads of handbooks to help you look after your digital stuff, so have a browse of their site too.
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Fixity is fancy-speak for whether or not the 1s and 0s in your files are as they should be. It is also the name of this free tool that helps you check the fixity of your files. This tool comes recommended to me, but I haven't actually used it yet. I'll get on that, and write you an article in the next few months.
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This is a free cloud storage and file sharing tool. It differs from Dropbox in that it prides itself on its security features. There is end-to-end, zero-knowledge encryption, which means that even the people at Sync.com can't read your files. New starters get 5GB as standard, but it's easy to get extra space by referring your friends. So if you sign up using my link, we both get an extra 1GB! How great is that?!
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I love this free tool for managing your digital files. The thing I use it for the most is batch-renaming my files. But you can use it to do tons of other things to help keep on top of your stuff.
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