Over the past decade, broad public understanding of an appreciation for personal digital archiving has increased in surprising ways. Facebook’s Timeline is in use by nearly 2 billion monthly users, Prince’s digital archive recently went on the market for $35 million, billions of smart phones have been put into to use to record daily experience, and concern about the future of personal digital belongings has become a staple of mainstream news reporting.
This discussion between early observers and practitioners of personal digital archiving will look back on the last decade, and forward to the next, covering changing social norms about what is saved, why, who can view it, and how; legal structures, intellectual property rights, and digital executorships; institutional practices, particularly in library and academic settings, but also in the form of new services to the public; market offerings from both established and emerging companies; and technological developments that will allow (or limit) the practice of personal archiving.
