I always like how the blogging questions
have me thinking about things I would have never thought of… Although, as a
“researcher”, I am almost ashamed to say that I never thought of how to ensure
that my research materials are preserved! Anyway, let’s use this blog post to
make up for lost time and think about how I can make sure that my research
materials survive time (and technology). Well first of all, most of my research
materials are not born-digital. I am working on 18th century
manuscripts, which I hope are well preserved at the University of Ottawa’s
Archives and Special Collections. Secondly, I like to print all articles
relevant to my subject or photocopy parts of relevant books I find (SORRY
environment!! I print double-sided though…) and directly write notes on the
printed papers. I know this is probably not the most efficient way of working,
and certainly not the most environmentally friendly way of working, but I have
tried many different methods over the years and I still keep coming back to
this one. So right now, unless there is a fire in my apartment or my files are
lost in a moving, anyone should be able to access and read my research
materials for years to come. However, everything I write about my research
(excluding notes), such as scholarly articles, presentations for conferences,
grant proposals and event a thesis or thesis proposal is written on a computer
and I have no idea how I could make sure these could survive time and
technological changes. I know about the various technologies available for
digital data preservation, but I am taking the “Managing Organizational Records
I” course this semester (required introductory records management course for
the ARM concentration) and after having a lot of discussion about the subject
in class, we still (including the prof!) do not a have a clear answer to that
question. I am really hoping my fellow bloggers’ posts or comments of my post will
help me with that, since this blogging question has really startled me!!!
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