Is digital preservation just an scholarly topict?

One of most surprising issues that can be viewed if one engages websites and blogs about digital preservation is that apparently it is a field devoted almost exclusively to academics or librarian staff with a very highly specialized expertise in computer science, archival documents and other common topics.

In a way, it is. This is because digital information that is kept in libraries and archives requires specialized personnel. From my point of view as a specialist in this field, I think we can also perform digital preservation activities at home with our electronics documents. I prefer to say electronics documents instead of digital documents, because digital information is created by electronics. So, you create electronic documents with digital capabilities.

I guess you wonder why? It's simple. Surely in your home you have electronic documents such as photos or videos and even your own music. I mention photos or videos because it is the first one that comes in mind. Do you think these photos or videos that you have at home, at a future time someone can be seen? With technology advances it is possible that in a near future, your children or grandchildren or you cannot see those pictures. And nobody can guarantee that.

It is also true that you have photos or videos in other devices you like music, mobiles, social networks and other sites on the cloud, but this issue will be discussed later. Therefore, we have to talk about personal digital preservation.

We have the ability to preserve digital documents so that we can keep at home, and that we ourselves can create a preservation plan, find software to help us and so on. Obviously this costs money but, what does not cost money? With the simple tools that you will see in this blog, you can collect your documents so that in the near future, you can view your information.

So the answer to the title of the blog is NO. Digital preservation can be practiced by everybody, obviously with its limitations and probably with more limitations than big institutions, but I think it's time to see how things can done and have a huge digital legacy.