  We conducted a preliminary field study to understand the current state of
personal digital archiving in practice. Our aim is to design a service for the
long-term storage, preservation, and access of digital belongings by examining
how personal archiving needs intersect with existing and emerging archiving
technologies, best practices, and policies. Our findings not only confirmed
that experienced home computer users are creating, receiving, and finding an
increasing number of digital belongings, but also that they have already lost
irreplaceable digital artifacts such as photos, creative efforts, and records.
Although participants reported strategies such as backup and file replication
for digital safekeeping, they were seldom able to implement them consistently.
Four central archiving themes emerged from the data: (1) people find it
difficult to evaluate the worth of accumulated materials; (2) personal storage
is highly distributed both on- and offline; (3) people are experiencing
magnified curatorial problems associated with managing files in the aggregate,
creating appropriate metadata, and migrating materials to maintainable formats;
and (4) facilities for long-term access are not supported by the current
desktop metaphor. Four environmental factors further complicate archiving in
consumer settings: the pervasive influence of malware; consumer reliance on ad
hoc IT providers; an accretion of minor system and registry inconsistencies;
and strong consumer beliefs about the incorruptibility of digital forms, the
reliability of digital technologies, and the social vulnerability of networked
storage.
