Over the last 20ish weeks, I have been doing a Deep Dive Series into how personal archiving can be an act of love (both of self-love, and as a way of connecting with others).
I have been thinking about what kinds of things people care about, and why people care so much about them. I've looked at the various ways people look after those things. For example, Malcolm who treated his laptop his home, or the studies from 2006 and 2008 about how people look after their digital possessions. And I have tried to unpack some of the obstacles that people face.
We have also thought about what archiving can do *for* people. Collecting and curating stuff can be a way of affirming relationships with others or enacting love, and of supporting your emotional health. And we have briefly looked at how third parties work to keep control of our personal archives.
Creativity has been a running theme through this series. Are there different types of creation? Is digital creation different from any other kind of creation? What are some of the ways you can care for things you are proud of? And just for a laugh, I have made some caricatures of different photography styles with some tips for managing your photograph collections!
This series has involved me "consenting to learn in public", and so I shared how I went about doing interviews. I posted a couple of lists of things that have been written about archiving from Australia, and from elsewhere around the (English-speaking) world. I had to stop and think about the words I was using, and I couldn't help sharing my surprise at discovering that some awesome peeps have been developing a personal archiving game. And when I learned from my friend Sophie about how to digitise audio cassette tapes, I had to share that with you too.
I hope that you have found some value in this series. It's been great to bounce some ideas around, so thank you so much for reading and sticking with me thus far!
I'll be back to my usual How To style articles and book reviews from now on, so if that sounds good to you, ping me your email address and I'll keep you updated!