Micro-archiving: Family and personal archives in the digital age

As creating websites has become increasingly easy for people without a technological background, there has been a steady increase in historical websites created by individuals that make use of open source applications. Wordpress, Google and Weebly are examples of such resources. The people who set up websites like this are often volunteers who want to share their passion for a subject or relatives of an older generation who want to preserve a record of a certain historical practice that they regard as important. The focus is often on local topics: the landscape, the village, the city or the neighbourhood. Yet the most documented experiences are of migration and war. The practice of passing family photo albums from one generation to the next does not exist when it comes to digital family heritage. How should websites or pages (with potential historical relevance) that are not embedded in an institutional setting or are posted on social media platforms be preserved for the future? On the basis of a case study below, you are going to explore the best strategies for micro-archiving.

Waving Family Portrait GIF By Archives Of Ontario

5.a A website about a grandfather’s life

One of the southern regions in the Netherlands, Limburg, used to be known for its coal mines. These were all closed down at the end of the 1960s,when much cheaper gas resources were found in the north of the Netherlands. The whole culture around coal miners was an important marker for the regional history of Limburg. This is the context in which Roy Simons – aged just 10 – started to document all the objects and stories that his grandfather had preserved about his life working in the mines. By 2012, at the age of 16, Roy had put together the website Mijn Museum – De Beukel (Mine Museum – The Beukel), which looked like this (this is a link to Roy’s website, which was created using a template provided by Webklik).

Roy's website

Roy ended up winning the history online award for historical websites, initiated by the online history magazine Historiek.

online history magazine Historiek

While it was an excellent website, Roy’s website is an example of how these types of sites run the risk of disappearing over time. He succeeded in creating his website by making use of one of the first free website services in the Netherlands, Webklik.

webklik

But this service did not last and all the content was moved to a service called Weebly.

The last snapshot made by the Wayback Machine with webklik is on 10 September 2014.

The first mention with the URL weebly is on 6 January 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20151206030556/http://mijnbouw.weebly.com/

Roy's website

This is still the URL where the website can be found at present, but the appearance of the site has completely changed. The home page does not have a personal welcome message and the multiple photos of a coal miner with a helmet and a drill are omitted. All references to Roy Simons and his grandfather are taken out. The “De Beukel collection” is now the entity that is central to the presentation, and no mention is made of a person or relative.

We know about these changes because of the previous snapshots taken by the Wayback Machine at the old URL.

While this is a very specific example (not all grandparents are honoured with a website about their lives!), the web is full of family histories about grandfathers and grandmothers. Trace some of these stories online in one of the languages you speak. You will find material by googling this combination of keywords:

  • Stories from my grandparents / grandfather/ grandmother
  • Geschichte meine Grosseltern / Grossmutter/ Grossvater
  • Histoire de mes grands-parents / ma grand-mère / mon grand-père

Now note the URL(s) of at least one of the websites that you have found and write a short sketch about the kinds of online environments in which these stories can be found and what this means for their long-term preservation.

  • Are these websites “safe” when published online, in the sense that their preservation is being taken care of? Check whether the Wayback Machine has covered the content of the website sufficiently.
  • Is the information about the grandparent created on the spot, like a blog post, or is it something that already existed in digital form and has been uploaded to the web environment?
  • If there are two files, one on your device or computer – e.g. the interview you conducted with your grandfather – and one online that you uploaded to a website where memories of a region are collected, do you need to preserve both? Think about the interactive nature of a website and the need to convert big files to be able to publish them on the web. How would you go about doing so?

5.b Archiving your own future historical sources

Listen to this brief talk by Dr Rebecca Huntley from the National and State Libraries of Australia on family-level micro-archiving. She makes the connection between looking back at her family history and imagining what will be needed in the future to reconstruct her own history: “Born Digital 2016: Digital lifestyles with Dr Rebecca Huntley (2016, National and State Libraries Australia, ASLA)”

card

Now think of your own presence online and answer the following questions:

  • What kind of content have you uploaded or posted on the web?
  • Are you represented with your name, photo and profile on a social media platform? If so, which one(s)?
  • Can you trace this back with the Wayback Machine?
  • Does a text, video, image or audio file created by you feature on a specific website/page (maybe years ago when you were at primary or secondary school)?
  • Is part of your personal life and history also documented in analogue form through photo albums, handwritten letters, postcards or diaries?

Lastly, on the website of the Centre for Digital Methods and Media of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, you will find many resources that you can learn to apply to web archiving. Go to the tab “Tools and Tutorials”, where you will find a series of tools to preserve different kinds of content that are published online. Choose one of the tools and try it out on one of the online pages in which you have posted/published stories, photos, video or audio that relates to your personal life.