Back in 2001 when I was getting ready to head off to War after 9-11. I spent some significant time writing a word document that was titled death.doc, weird word to call it but figured it would not be deleted if found, today my mom holds the printed document and a CD with additional data in a sealed envelope that is in her safety deposit box. Obviously my hope was that she would never have to open it. That document was the hardest document I ever had to write. I did my best to sum up words of wisdom that would be read in days months and years following what I surely did not want to happen.
While someday I am sure I will need to review and revise what I wrote, I also realized even then that it would be near impossible for one to cover everything one would want to say in such a situation.
While non of us like to face, or even consider our mortality I was very aware that in a word shit happens sometimes, and when your number is up their is not a lot you can do about it. The process I went through in creating that document back in 2001 really made me think about a bigger project that I never started which came back to haunt me.
With the untimely death of my father last year, and with him the loss of some significant family history we have been working hard to piece as much family historical info as we can from other family members as no one is getting any younger.
This leads me to a current project, I have been creating a series of audio and video recordings that are in a way a family biography that I am hoping to archive in a way so that not only will my kids have access to this stuff that someday when my ancestors are digging around are able review the material.
The challenge I am having is preservation of the material so that in 5, 10, 20, 200 years people will be able to access the data. You would not want to trust your data with a company but at the same time natural disasters happen all the time. So while I am not alone in dealing with this time continues to tick.
The question needs to be raised and a plan formulated for those of use looking to archive digital media like this.
I am not doing anything quite as ambitious as you (yet) but I do have a huge digital camera picture archive of my family and life events that I want preserved even after I am gone. It is a partial history of my life and those around me. While some may feel it is an ego trip to want it to be around for hundreds or even thousands of years, would those same people feel more or less connected to their ancestors if they had a pictoral archive going back a few hundred years?
I have subscribed to your feed and look forward to future posting on your endeavor to catalog this data for those that come after us.
Chris
Over the last few years, I’ve been thinking about what I can do to make my personal history easily accessible for my family and ancestors. This mostly includes pictures, but extends to typed journal entries, important dates, and audio and video as you mentioned. I try and avoid using software or systems that do not allow me to export my data into an open format so that I can move my information if needed and keep an archive.
I feel that part of my work is to make it easy to access, including browsing by dates, keyword searching and the like. I also try and limit my media to just the good stuff, instead of keeping every lousy picture I have ever taken.
Random thoughts, but I relate to your project and ideas.