Digital Archiving Practices of Writers
Today, not from one of the archivists working on or who knew about this project (even though I am an archivist), I received a twice-nested forward of this message about a project considering the digital archiving practices of writers:
1. Disclaimers, etc.
[I've left this part out, which was the only part without any questions.]
2. How you compose
Here we ask what you write and what you use to write it.
1. What genres do you work in? (Choose all that apply)
√ Fiction
√ Poetry
√ Nonfiction
- Drama
- Other (please specify)
2. What's your primary genre?
- Fiction
√ Poetry
- Nonfiction
- Drama
- Other (please specify)
3. How many books, or other major works (play, screenplay, etc.), have you published or produced?
- 1
- 2
- 3
√ 4
- 5
- 6 or more
4. What kinds of devices do you own or have access to for writing? (If you own one of the below devices but do not use it for any writing purposes, do not select it.)
√ laptop
- desktop
- ipad or other tablet device
√ smartphone
- PDA
- Other (please specify)
5. How many devices do you own or have access to for writing?
- 1
- 2
√ 3
- 4
- 5 or more
6. What operating systems do you use on your devices? (Check all that apply.)
√ Windows
√ Mac OS
- Linux
- Android
√ Other (please specify)
iOS (previously iPhone OS)
7. Do you work on one device primarily? If so, what is it? If not, how do you manage your files and drafts between devices?
Please elaborate.
Primarily on my Macintosh laptop, but occasionally on a Windows-based laptop, and often on my iPhone. Everything on the Windows-based laptop I transfer to and consolidate on the Macintosh. The iPhone either goes directly to the Web, from which I download some of it to maintain or create drafts, or I transfer the material off my iPhone and consolidate it on my Macintosh.
8. Do you also use pen/paper/typewriters to write, or do you use only digital tools?
- Digital Only
√ Digital primarily, with some non-digital work
- About equal work digital and non-digital
- Non-digital primarily, with some digital work
Please elaborate on your process.
Most of my output is standard textual poems (words in lines on a page) or essays. These I create only digitally. I also create a large number of visual poems, video poems, and sound poems digitally and maintain those digitally. I also create poems directly with digital cameras. However, I do create a significant number of visual poems by hand on paper or other solid surfaces. And I occasionally still write short poems by hand, usually in small books.
9. If you do use non-digital tools, at what point do you go digital, (e.g., notes on paper, then first draft on computer) or do you go back and forth between digital and non-digital work?
If I create a textual poem by hand, I eventually create a digital version of it, and it is from this version that I create subsequent drafts. With handwritten visual poems, in which the handwriting itself is part of the poem, I eventually create final versions of these by hand, and I scan those so that I have distribution copies of those. In this case, however, the original paper copy I consider the true or record copy of the poem.
3. How you save
Wherein we ask you how you save your work
1. How do you (or, do you) save your prewriting/notes?
I save notes made on paper as paper. Notes made digitally I save digitally, usually appended to the bottom of the first draft of a piece of writing.
2. In what format do you save your digital files?
√ Microsoft Word files (.doc, or .docx)
√ PDFs
√ Other text based file such as rtf
√ Other file type
If you marked other, please specifiy what file(s) you work in. Or elaborate as you see
fit.
Most of my textual poems I save in Microsoft Word files for drafts, saving the final versions of entire manuscripts as PDF/As. I save most visual poems created on the computer (with Adobe Illustrator, inDesign, or Photoshop) temporarily in their native formats, but as PDF/As for the final version and often JPEGs as distribution copies. The final recorded copy of sound poems (this does not include scores for sound poems, of course) I save as WAV files, but they are usually created as MPEGs. For videopoems, I usually save them in their native format, which is usually .mov, but I have used other formats, such as .wmf. My goal would be to normalize these as Motion JPEG 2000 files, but I have not.
3. Do you save drafts of your individual works as you go along, or do you simply save over what youíve already written?
√ I save drafts.
- I save over my files.
Please elaborate, if you would.
Not all drafts are saved of digital files, but I usually save my drafts. For textual poems, I save drafts as electronic and paper files. For digital sound, video, and visual poems, I save drafts digitally. For my essay-like writing to the web, I never print it out.
4. What are your naming conventions for your files, notes, etc.?
example: thewasteland_1.doc, or thewastelandNEW.doc
For textual and visual poems:
Name of File.ext
Name of File v2.ext (to indicate a later version)
Sometimes, I also use a number (001, 075, 134, etc.) [at the front of the filename] to indicate the order in which poems appear in a manuscript.
For sound and poems as audio or video files:
YYYY-MM-DD Name of File, City, and State or Country Where Created.ext
YYYY-MM-DD Name of File (Draft), City, and State or Country Where Created.ext (to indicate an earlier draft or aural or video ìnotesî towards the creation of these poems)
5. How did you develop your archiving practices? Did you emulate someone? Were you given instruction? Did your saving conventions and storage techniques just develop through your writing?
I am an archivist and records manager, so my practices try to conform to advice I would give people who were creating digital literature. Still, I would say, my practices are incompletely in place, because Iím note quite caught up naming all my files, and because I do not back up as frequently as I believe I should.
6. Do you print out your writing to revise it?
√ Yes
- No
Please elaborate, if you would.
Not always, but I sometimes print out drafts, usually only of textual poems. Some writing, such as my voluminous writing to the web, I never print out.
7. Do you save any paper copies of interim drafts?
√ Yes
- No
Please elaborate, if you would.
See above.
4. How you back it up
Wherein we ask you how you back up and archive your work
1. How often do you back up your work?
- Once a week
- Once a month
- Once every six months
- Once every year
- Never
√ Continually (e.g. using a device or a cloud service such as dropbox)
Other (please specify)
Everything on my computer is backed up automatically as I work. But my backup procedures are more complicated than that. See below.
2. Where do you back up your work? (Check all that apply)
- thumbdrive
√ external hard drive
√ on my computer (in another folder or some other way)
√ on cloud drive (online services such as dropbox or .Mac)
- on disc (DVD or CD)
√on paper
√ via email (I email files to myself)
I do not back up my work, I just save it on my computer
Please elaborate on your process.
I back up my audio and video files (except for drafts) via online services as I create them. I do not have a good program for backing up other files onto hard drives. Currently, I save a large volume of work on a 1TB hard drive, but that is often the only copy of each of those files. This is my big danger, but I do have paper backup of the textual poems.
3. Do you use any cloud-based file systems such as Dropbox, or a .Mac account?
√ Yes
- No
Please elaborate, if you would.
This is not exactly cloud-based, but close enough. I back up almost all of my audio and video poems in public online spaces from which I can download it if I need to. I back up my audio files at The Internet Archive, and I back up my video files at Vimeo. I also keep video files, for public distribution only, at YouTube.
4. If you have files saved in more than one location, how do you keep track of them?
Itís all fairly simple. The master files are always either on my 1 TB hard drive or my computer, but other backups are as explained above.
4. How do you save the work you're finished with (i.e., published poems)?
Examples: move finished work to FINISHED folder, or print out copy and keep in file
Finished works in digital form are saved to my external hard drive and are kept in case I need to distribute copies in the future. I also can search through them more easily by keeping them in electronic form.
5. Do you keep print copies of final drafts? How do you organize them?
Always, for those forms of my writing that can be printed out. These are arranged in a series of Art and Writing, subdivided by type of writing (such as Dictionaries, Essays, Fiction, Poems, and Visual Poems), each of those is subdivided by the title of the manuscript, and I also keep multiple versions of drafts of poem, marked by date or by draft number.
6. How about the media you've been published in—do you keep copies of the print journals? Do you keep track of web publications in some way?
I keep copies of all print publications I have work in. I track all of my web publications on a link list on the sidebar of my primary blog. I used to keep a database of all my works, along with detailed metadata on their creation and publication, but that is now quite a few years out of date.
7.Do you have any standard archiving practices?
Example: a typical length of time after which you move files off your laptop onto an external hard drive
√ yes
- no
Elaborate, if you'd like.
My archiving practices are to remove large files off my computer almost immediately, so audio and video files stay there generally no more than a few days. And digital images, some of which are poems, I usually transfer off the computer once a year at the beginning of the year (but I've been too busy this month to do that yet).
5. How you feel
Wherein we ask you some short questions about the topic
1. Have you ever received or sought out (e.g. read online) information about methods for digital archiving activities?
√ Yes
- No
Comments?
I read such information as part of my professional practice. And this particular issue is of especial interest to me. Just yesterday, I was giving, on behalf of the Society of American Archivists, a webinar on managing electronic records, and I gave some quick and sketchy advice on the issue of dealing with digital manuscript materials, which have the potential of being one of the great voids in the archival record. One thought I have about this survey is that it is focused exclusively on one type of record that writers produce: their writings themselves. But there are plenty of other related records I think must be address, including correspondence (now, primarily email) and event records (such as video files of readings or other literary events), all of which are part of documenting the life and work of a writer.
2. Would you be interested in receiving information about recommended practices for digitally archiving your work?
√ Yes
- No
6. And finally …
Thank you for your time! We really appreciate you indulging our curiosity in this way. There is only one last (optional) question.
1. What did we miss?
What did we miss? We know we are bound to miss important details about some writersí processes. Here is your chance to think back to what youíve just written and note anything additional, antithetical, heretical or otherwise regarding these topics. You may also comment on the survey itself here, provide a narrative of your process (for those of you narratively inclined), or simply type out a bunch of cuss words. You can also totally skip this. Have a great rest of your day.
This particular issue is of especial interest to me. Just yesterday, I was giving, on behalf of the Society of American Archivists, a webinar on managing electronic records, and I gave some quick and sketchy advice on the issue of dealing with digital manuscript materials, which have the potential of being one of the great voids in the archival record.
One thought I have about this survey is that it is focused exclusively on one type of record that writers produce: their writings themselves. But there are plenty of other related records I think must be address, including correspondence (now, primarily email) and event records (such as video files of readings or other literary events), all of which are part of documenting the life and work of a writer.
If you're interested in some recommended best practices for preserving digital files, please visit the below site, which was set up by the wonderful librarians at Yaleís Beinecke Library:
http://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/digital-preservation/
ecr. l'inf
I've put together a survey to study the digital archiving practices of emerging writers. My co-investigator, Collier Nogues (a poet with a book coming out from Four Way) and I are trying to get a sense, basically, of how people are saving/archiving their work, and how this might affect their writing practices and the practices of special collection librarians (like you) in the future. We're presenting our initial findings at the personal digital archiving conference in San Francisco next month.And so I pass this message on to the readers of this blog, and below I include my response to the survey. I've made a few tiny corrections (elimination of a word here and a letter there) to my responses, but otherwise it is as I have submitted them. But if you decide to take the survey yourself, don't cheat and copy my responses.
So, if you have the time and/or inclination, please take our survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/digitalarchiving and pass it out to any writer you think might find it interesting.
1. Disclaimers, etc.
[I've left this part out, which was the only part without any questions.]
2. How you compose
Here we ask what you write and what you use to write it.
1. What genres do you work in? (Choose all that apply)
√ Fiction
√ Poetry
√ Nonfiction
- Drama
- Other (please specify)
2. What's your primary genre?
- Fiction
√ Poetry
- Nonfiction
- Drama
- Other (please specify)
3. How many books, or other major works (play, screenplay, etc.), have you published or produced?
- 1
- 2
- 3
√ 4
- 5
- 6 or more
4. What kinds of devices do you own or have access to for writing? (If you own one of the below devices but do not use it for any writing purposes, do not select it.)
√ laptop
- desktop
- ipad or other tablet device
√ smartphone
- PDA
- Other (please specify)
5. How many devices do you own or have access to for writing?
- 1
- 2
√ 3
- 4
- 5 or more
6. What operating systems do you use on your devices? (Check all that apply.)
√ Windows
√ Mac OS
- Linux
- Android
√ Other (please specify)
iOS (previously iPhone OS)
7. Do you work on one device primarily? If so, what is it? If not, how do you manage your files and drafts between devices?
Please elaborate.
Primarily on my Macintosh laptop, but occasionally on a Windows-based laptop, and often on my iPhone. Everything on the Windows-based laptop I transfer to and consolidate on the Macintosh. The iPhone either goes directly to the Web, from which I download some of it to maintain or create drafts, or I transfer the material off my iPhone and consolidate it on my Macintosh.
8. Do you also use pen/paper/typewriters to write, or do you use only digital tools?
- Digital Only
√ Digital primarily, with some non-digital work
- About equal work digital and non-digital
- Non-digital primarily, with some digital work
Please elaborate on your process.
Most of my output is standard textual poems (words in lines on a page) or essays. These I create only digitally. I also create a large number of visual poems, video poems, and sound poems digitally and maintain those digitally. I also create poems directly with digital cameras. However, I do create a significant number of visual poems by hand on paper or other solid surfaces. And I occasionally still write short poems by hand, usually in small books.
9. If you do use non-digital tools, at what point do you go digital, (e.g., notes on paper, then first draft on computer) or do you go back and forth between digital and non-digital work?
If I create a textual poem by hand, I eventually create a digital version of it, and it is from this version that I create subsequent drafts. With handwritten visual poems, in which the handwriting itself is part of the poem, I eventually create final versions of these by hand, and I scan those so that I have distribution copies of those. In this case, however, the original paper copy I consider the true or record copy of the poem.
3. How you save
Wherein we ask you how you save your work
1. How do you (or, do you) save your prewriting/notes?
I save notes made on paper as paper. Notes made digitally I save digitally, usually appended to the bottom of the first draft of a piece of writing.
2. In what format do you save your digital files?
√ Microsoft Word files (.doc, or .docx)
√ PDFs
√ Other text based file such as rtf
√ Other file type
If you marked other, please specifiy what file(s) you work in. Or elaborate as you see
fit.
Most of my textual poems I save in Microsoft Word files for drafts, saving the final versions of entire manuscripts as PDF/As. I save most visual poems created on the computer (with Adobe Illustrator, inDesign, or Photoshop) temporarily in their native formats, but as PDF/As for the final version and often JPEGs as distribution copies. The final recorded copy of sound poems (this does not include scores for sound poems, of course) I save as WAV files, but they are usually created as MPEGs. For videopoems, I usually save them in their native format, which is usually .mov, but I have used other formats, such as .wmf. My goal would be to normalize these as Motion JPEG 2000 files, but I have not.
3. Do you save drafts of your individual works as you go along, or do you simply save over what youíve already written?
√ I save drafts.
- I save over my files.
Please elaborate, if you would.
Not all drafts are saved of digital files, but I usually save my drafts. For textual poems, I save drafts as electronic and paper files. For digital sound, video, and visual poems, I save drafts digitally. For my essay-like writing to the web, I never print it out.
4. What are your naming conventions for your files, notes, etc.?
example: thewasteland_1.doc, or thewastelandNEW.doc
For textual and visual poems:
Name of File.ext
Name of File v2.ext (to indicate a later version)
Sometimes, I also use a number (001, 075, 134, etc.) [at the front of the filename] to indicate the order in which poems appear in a manuscript.
For sound and poems as audio or video files:
YYYY-MM-DD Name of File, City, and State or Country Where Created.ext
YYYY-MM-DD Name of File (Draft), City, and State or Country Where Created.ext (to indicate an earlier draft or aural or video ìnotesî towards the creation of these poems)
5. How did you develop your archiving practices? Did you emulate someone? Were you given instruction? Did your saving conventions and storage techniques just develop through your writing?
I am an archivist and records manager, so my practices try to conform to advice I would give people who were creating digital literature. Still, I would say, my practices are incompletely in place, because Iím note quite caught up naming all my files, and because I do not back up as frequently as I believe I should.
6. Do you print out your writing to revise it?
√ Yes
- No
Please elaborate, if you would.
Not always, but I sometimes print out drafts, usually only of textual poems. Some writing, such as my voluminous writing to the web, I never print out.
7. Do you save any paper copies of interim drafts?
√ Yes
- No
Please elaborate, if you would.
See above.
4. How you back it up
Wherein we ask you how you back up and archive your work
1. How often do you back up your work?
- Once a week
- Once a month
- Once every six months
- Once every year
- Never
√ Continually (e.g. using a device or a cloud service such as dropbox)
Other (please specify)
Everything on my computer is backed up automatically as I work. But my backup procedures are more complicated than that. See below.
2. Where do you back up your work? (Check all that apply)
- thumbdrive
√ external hard drive
√ on my computer (in another folder or some other way)
√ on cloud drive (online services such as dropbox or .Mac)
- on disc (DVD or CD)
√on paper
√ via email (I email files to myself)
I do not back up my work, I just save it on my computer
Please elaborate on your process.
I back up my audio and video files (except for drafts) via online services as I create them. I do not have a good program for backing up other files onto hard drives. Currently, I save a large volume of work on a 1TB hard drive, but that is often the only copy of each of those files. This is my big danger, but I do have paper backup of the textual poems.
3. Do you use any cloud-based file systems such as Dropbox, or a .Mac account?
√ Yes
- No
Please elaborate, if you would.
This is not exactly cloud-based, but close enough. I back up almost all of my audio and video poems in public online spaces from which I can download it if I need to. I back up my audio files at The Internet Archive, and I back up my video files at Vimeo. I also keep video files, for public distribution only, at YouTube.
4. If you have files saved in more than one location, how do you keep track of them?
Itís all fairly simple. The master files are always either on my 1 TB hard drive or my computer, but other backups are as explained above.
4. How do you save the work you're finished with (i.e., published poems)?
Examples: move finished work to FINISHED folder, or print out copy and keep in file
Finished works in digital form are saved to my external hard drive and are kept in case I need to distribute copies in the future. I also can search through them more easily by keeping them in electronic form.
5. Do you keep print copies of final drafts? How do you organize them?
Always, for those forms of my writing that can be printed out. These are arranged in a series of Art and Writing, subdivided by type of writing (such as Dictionaries, Essays, Fiction, Poems, and Visual Poems), each of those is subdivided by the title of the manuscript, and I also keep multiple versions of drafts of poem, marked by date or by draft number.
6. How about the media you've been published in—do you keep copies of the print journals? Do you keep track of web publications in some way?
I keep copies of all print publications I have work in. I track all of my web publications on a link list on the sidebar of my primary blog. I used to keep a database of all my works, along with detailed metadata on their creation and publication, but that is now quite a few years out of date.
7.Do you have any standard archiving practices?
Example: a typical length of time after which you move files off your laptop onto an external hard drive
√ yes
- no
Elaborate, if you'd like.
My archiving practices are to remove large files off my computer almost immediately, so audio and video files stay there generally no more than a few days. And digital images, some of which are poems, I usually transfer off the computer once a year at the beginning of the year (but I've been too busy this month to do that yet).
5. How you feel
Wherein we ask you some short questions about the topic
1. Have you ever received or sought out (e.g. read online) information about methods for digital archiving activities?
√ Yes
- No
Comments?
I read such information as part of my professional practice. And this particular issue is of especial interest to me. Just yesterday, I was giving, on behalf of the Society of American Archivists, a webinar on managing electronic records, and I gave some quick and sketchy advice on the issue of dealing with digital manuscript materials, which have the potential of being one of the great voids in the archival record. One thought I have about this survey is that it is focused exclusively on one type of record that writers produce: their writings themselves. But there are plenty of other related records I think must be address, including correspondence (now, primarily email) and event records (such as video files of readings or other literary events), all of which are part of documenting the life and work of a writer.
2. Would you be interested in receiving information about recommended practices for digitally archiving your work?
√ Yes
- No
6. And finally …
Thank you for your time! We really appreciate you indulging our curiosity in this way. There is only one last (optional) question.
1. What did we miss?
What did we miss? We know we are bound to miss important details about some writersí processes. Here is your chance to think back to what youíve just written and note anything additional, antithetical, heretical or otherwise regarding these topics. You may also comment on the survey itself here, provide a narrative of your process (for those of you narratively inclined), or simply type out a bunch of cuss words. You can also totally skip this. Have a great rest of your day.
This particular issue is of especial interest to me. Just yesterday, I was giving, on behalf of the Society of American Archivists, a webinar on managing electronic records, and I gave some quick and sketchy advice on the issue of dealing with digital manuscript materials, which have the potential of being one of the great voids in the archival record.
One thought I have about this survey is that it is focused exclusively on one type of record that writers produce: their writings themselves. But there are plenty of other related records I think must be address, including correspondence (now, primarily email) and event records (such as video files of readings or other literary events), all of which are part of documenting the life and work of a writer.
If you're interested in some recommended best practices for preserving digital files, please visit the below site, which was set up by the wonderful librarians at Yaleís Beinecke Library:
http://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/digital-preservation/
ecr. l'inf
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