A short, thought-provoking book about what happens to our online identities after we die.

These days, so much of our lives takes place online—but what about our afterlives? Thanks to the digital trails that we leave behind, our identities can now be reconstructed after our death. In fact, AI technology is already enabling us to “interact” with the departed. Sooner than we think, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook. In this thought-provoking book, Carl Öhman explores the increasingly urgent question of what we should do with all this data and whether our digital afterlives are really our own—and if not, who should have the right to decide what happens to our data.

The stakes could hardly be higher. In the next thirty years alone, about two billion people will die. Those of us who remain will inherit the digital remains of an entire generation of humanity—the first digital citizens. Whoever ends up controlling these archives will also effectively control future access to our collective digital past, and this power will have vast political consequences. The fate of our digital remains should be of concern to everyone—past, present, and future. Rising to these challenges, Öhman explains, will require a collective reshaping of our economic and technical systems to reflect more than just the monetary value of digital remains.

As we stand before a period of deep civilizational change, The Afterlife of Data will be an essential guide to understanding why and how we as a human race must gain control of our collective digital past—before it is too late.

Drawing on cultural policy, queer and feminist theory, materialist media studies, and postcolonial historiography, Bliss Cua Lim analyzes the crisis-ridden history of Philippine film archiving—a history of lost films, limited access, and collapsed archives. Rather than denigrate underfunded Philippine audiovisual archives in contrast to institutions in the global North, The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema shows how archival practices of making do can inspire alternative theoretical and historical approaches to cinema. Lim examines formal state and corporate archives, analyzing restorations of the last nitrate film and a star-studded lesbian classic as well as archiving under the Marcos dictatorship. She also foregrounds informal archival efforts: a cinephilic video store specializing in vintage Tagalog classics; a microcuratorial initiative for experimental films; and guerilla screenings for rural Visayan audiences. Throughout, Lim centers the improvisational creativity of audiovisual archivists, collectors, advocates, and amateurs who embrace imperfect access in the face of inhospitable conditions.

Considers the future of conservation and its connection to the human sciences. 

This volume brings together the findings from a five-year research project that seeks to reimagine the relationship between conservation knowledge and the humanistic study of the material world. The project, “Cultures of Conservation,” was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and included events, seminars, and an artist-in-residence. 

The effort to conserve things amid change is part of the human struggle with the nature of matter. For as long as people have made things and kept things, they have also cared for and repaired them. Today, conservators use a variety of tools and categories developed over the last one hundred and fifty years to do this work, but in the coming decades, new kinds of materials and a new scale of change will pose unprecedented challenges. Looking ahead to this moment from the perspectives of history, philosophy, materials science, and anthropology, this volume explores new possibilities for both conservation and the humanities in the rethinking of active matter.

Digital Preservation Essentials is part of the series Trends in Archives Practice. It includes two modules by Erin O'Meara and Kate Stratton: Module 12: Preserving Digital Objects Explores concepts of digital preservation in the archival context, focusing on standards and metadata required to make digital objects accessible and understandable over time. Module 13: Digital Preservation Storage Provides an introduction to digital storage best practices for long-term preservation, including terminology, hardware, and configurations. As University of Illinois Preservation Librarian Kyle R. Rimkus notes in the introduction, "The successful archivist needs a grounding in the fundamental concepts of digital preservation, a command of its key terminology and practices, and an ability to build effective programs and practices. These modules provide an excellent point of entry."

In this unique collection the authors present a wide range of interdisciplinary methods to study, document, and conserve material cultural heritage. The methods used serve as exemplars of best practice with a wide variety of cultural heritage objectshaving been recorded, examined, and visualised. The objects range in date, scale, materials, and state of preservation and sopose different research questions and challenges for digitization, conservation, and ontological representation of knowledge. Heritage science and specialist digital technologies are presented in a way approachable to non-scientists, while a separate technical section provides details of methods and techniques, alongside examples of notable applications of spatial and spectral documentation of material cultural heritage, with selected literature and identification of future research. This book is an outcome of interdisciplinary research and debates conducted by the participants of the COST Action TD1201, Colour and Space in Cultural Heritage, 2012–16 and is an Open Access publication available under a CC BY-NC-ND licence.

When it comes to personal collections, we live in exciting times. Individuals are living their lives in ways that are increasingly mediated by digital technologies — digital photos and video footage, music, the social web, e-mail,and other day-to-day interactions. Although this mediation presents many technical challenges for long-term preservation, it also provides unprecedented opportunities for documenting the lives of individuals.

Ten authors — Robert Capra, Adrian Cunningham, Tom Hyry, Leslie Johnston, Christopher (Cal) Lee, Sue McKemmish, Cathy Marshall, Rachel Onuf, Kristina Spurgin, and Susan Thomas — share their expertise on the various aspects of the management of digital information in I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era.

The volume is divided in three parts:

Part 1 is devoted to conceptual foundations and motivations.

Part 2 focuses on particular types, genres, and forms of personal traces; areas of further study; and new opportunities for appraisal and collection.

Part 3 addresses strategies and practices of professionals who work in memory institutions.

Chapters explore issues,challenges, and opportunities in the management of personal digital collections, focusing primarily on born-digital materials generated and kept by individuals.

Contributions to I, Digital represent the depth in thinking about how cultural institutions can grapple with new forms of documentation, and how individuals manage--and could better manage--digital information that is part of contemporary life.

Digital records pose many challenges for archives, libraries, and museums; and behind them all lurks the shadow of trust. How can donors know that your repository will take good care of their digital files? How can people verify that the records they wish to use are authentic? How can they have confidence in being able to access obsolete file formats far into the future? These are difficult questions, but whatever the size or mission of your archives, you can move it closer to answering them and to being a trusted digital repository. Meeting the gold standard—ISO 16363 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories—may seem like a far-off goal, but Module 8: Becoming a Trusted Digital Repository demystifies this complex standard. Module 8 demonstrates specific ways that your archives, library, or museum can identify gaps, improve digital operations, and plan for future enhancements so that you can indeed help it become a trusted digital repository.

Moving Image and Sound Collections for Archivists by Anthony Cocciolo is for every archivist (or archivist in training) who has unearthed some carrier of moving image and sound and wondered what to do. Combining best practices with guidance for specific media formats, Cocciolo applies concepts of appraisal, description, and accessioning to audiovisual collections, providing a solid grounding for archivists in environments where resources for description, digitization, and storage are scarce.