Exploring the methods and practises of personal digital information archiving among the student population

Abstract

The issue of personal archiving is one often raised in the context of the fast changing digital era. Even among the "informationally literate" personal digital archiving is more often simply a side-effect of generating content in the digital environment than a planned activity. The aim of this paper is to research the extent to which the student population employs the doctrines of digital curation, digital preservation and digital stewardship. This group is interesting for examining in this context because of the unique mixture of formal, mainly scholarly, and personal information that they govern in their day to day activities and in digital formats. Some of the information that this research attempted to obtain concerned the actions individuals undertake to acquire, store and conserve digital objects, the formats they use and the practices they employ in the process. An attempt was made to determine whether the migration of content is practiced, where and how digital information is stored, as well as whether or not scholarly objects (such as those used for study) are handled differently than informal ones (such as those used for entertainment and other private purposes). The paper also provides insight into student practices regarding the creation of digital copies of objects and the use of other media such as portable memory sticks, CDs, DVDs and Blue-Ray discs. The research touches on a number of other questions, such as: how often do students revisit the contents once they've created them? Do they use digital archiving in the cloud? Do they create backups for the objects they have identified as important to preserve? This paper also contributes to identifying the specific criteria for the selection of digital information that will remain preserved for the future other than pure chance. The survey was conducted on undergraduate and graduate information science students from the Universities of Osijek, Zagreb and Zadar. Online questionnaire sent to said institutions and dispatched among information science students resulted in data that can be used in attempts to answer the above mentioned questions. Once the survey was closed, the gathered data was analysed using SPSS programme and used to draw conclusions regarding personal digital archiving practices and awareness among this population, along with other interesting findings this study brought up.

Personal information organization in everyday life: modeling the process

“…In fact, many studies observed that people still extensively use folders for organizing personal digital files, as previously reviewed. In particular, Marčetić (2015) and Krtalić et al (2016), who asked approximately 220 university students about their personal digital information organizing practices, reported that 94.5 percent (Marčetić, 2015) and 97.4 percent (Krtalić et al, 2016) of the participants organized digital files in folders, which shows that it is a dominant organizing practice for digital files. As shown above, most of the personal information organization studies examined certain aspects of the organization process or the end results of organization.…”

Modeling the process of personal digital archiving through ubiquitous and desktop devices: A systematic review

“…Backup frequency was also noted in different studies, such as continuous backup, once in a week, month, or once in 6 months (Becker and Nogues, 2012); random backup (Krtalić et al, 2016; Marčetić, 2015); and making backup with any defined criteria (Zhao et al, 2019).…”

“…Many studies reported the backup practices of personal digital information (Divya and Sudhier, 2018; Hicks et al, 2008; Marshall et al, 2006). People made backup of different types of documents such as official documents (Krtalić et al, 2016; Marčetić, 2015), messages (Zhao et al, 2019), emails, photos, and videos (Krtalić et al, 2016; Sinn et al, 2017; Zhao et al, 2019).…”

“…However, two recent terms were used widely in literature. These terms included as PDA (Becker and Nogues, 2012; Condron, 2019; Cushing, 2010; Marshall, 2008; Redwine, 2015; Sinn et al, 2017; Xiangjun, 2018; Zhao et al, 2019) or Personal Digital Information Archiving (Krtalić et al, 2016; Marčetić, 2015), and long-term retrieval (Whittaker et al, 2010).…”

Awareness on Mechanical and Chemical Plaque Control in Children- A Survey

“…The examination indicated that 84% of the people had built up the correct propensity for cleaning their tongue and 71% wash their mouth after dinners in their everyday routine (Rajeshkumar et al, 2018b). The use of mouthrinses with 0.1% or 0.2%, chlorhexidine (CHX) in children, for 6 months, achieved significant reductions for plaque and gingival indices, and no differences for caries increment, compared with a placebo (Marčetić, 2015). With the concurrent application of PTC and a 0.4% or 1% CHX toothpaste in dental students over a period of 2-years, no differences were found in plaque and gingival scores, with the placebo group, while a lower caries increment was observed in the 1% CHX group, when compared to all other groups, concomitantly with a higher number of active non-cavitated lesions becoming inactive (Karthiga et al, 2018).…”