As the blogger of the week, I want to begin by reflecting on the data of all sorts that piles up on our hard drives. We all have to find ways to manage the information that we just acquire as we work or research or just browse the web. What is clear is that all users are facing the same challenges.
On Slashdot yesterday, an anonymous reader asks:
“Like many slashdotters, I have several TB of digital media: music, books, movies, tv shows, games, comics, you name it. I’ve put it all in a few HDs, but handling it all has proven to be less than optimal. I’m covered when it comes to music, since [pretty much any music player/library manager] allows me to quickly find songs by interpreter, album, genre… For everything else, all I have is a series of hierarchical folder structures, but hierarchies have limitations. I can find Blade Runner easily, but what if I wanted all of Scott Ridley’s films? Where is ‘Good Omens’, in the Terry Pratchett folder or in Neil Gaiman’s? Furthermore, in a collection with hundreds of similar items, it would help to have some extra clues such as covers (for comic books) or synopsis for TV shows’ episodes. Do you have any software to help you handle digital media libraries?”
(Slashdot http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/03/21/1353257/Ask-Slashdot-Huge-Digital-Media-Libraries)
Readers responded with what amounts to a long list of software they use or specific approaches they take to their own huge collections of information. Some readers use iTunes to store not just music but also movies and ebooks. Some point to specific tools with names like, collectorz, or Delicious Monster, or even MediaTomb. Some have developed their own databases. One writer said, “Just use what the libraries use: Fedora.”
Many of the comments focus on movies–clearly the favoured collectible of the moment. At least one reader asked what the point of saving all these files was. How many would a person re-watch?
The point is that many of us are just collectors. If we have a shoebox, we will find something to put into it. If we have a huge hard drive, we will create our own video library. If we are researchers who are now able to keep a pdf version of any article we read or scan or want to save to read later, we will create our own library.
Today on BoingBoing.net, Nate McVaugh writes an article called “My essential Mac research applications.” McVaugh creates his own list of tools that allows him to work productively. His number one recommendation is
Papers ($79, $49 student price, OS X). If you use journal articles in your research, you need this software. Think of it as iTunes for academic documents. It does several things for you. It organizes groups of documents, keeps a bibliographic database linked to the documents, lets you search for current articles by journal, author, or any other criteria you can think of, both in your document collection and online.
If readers of this blog have any tools or techniques to suggest–for research or personal collections, I would love to hear them.
This is a very important question every computer user needs to ask themselves. Good blog post.
Forgive me for branching off, but I think that we, as a society, should take a particular interest in categorizing what we create on our personal computers. Whether it’s a draft of an opinion, an old essay from 2006, a photoshop, weblogs, forum posts, or comments on this blog, we should all be gleaning these bits of information and organizing them for our own personal online portfolios. Who better to find this information than ourselves? We know (for the most part) where we’ve been and what we’ve done on computers.
I think we’ve all asked ourselves what happens to our laptop, our external hard drives, our USB keys, or our e-mail correspondence if we were to suddenly die. Who handles the digital (and physical)information we’ve left behind? It’s a question many of us tend to avoid since this technology is new and quick, but it’s an unavoidable outcome for which many of us are not prepared.
To prepare personal data for the unthinkable is not as unpleasant as it sounds. Well-organized portfolios could benefit everyone. The question comes down to how we want to be remembered once we kick the bucket: through a collection of Facebook statuses (stati?) and Tweets? or through a collection of computerized thoughts and emotions to create a clearer or more honest (arguable) picture of ourselves? or maybe it’s a touch of both?
Regardless, some of us need to plan more.
I agree.
We should think of ways of curating–to use a popular term–our personal records so that they present a coherent image of who we are/were. This type of portfolio software should be a growth area. I wonder, are good existing programs that enable one to create this type of structured record for posterity?
However, as long as we leave the documents themselves, those we leave behind will have the opportunity to examine the raw data and come to their own conclusions about us.
What about the Google model of organizing: Store it on the cloud and make it searchable?
Most people do not enjoy being librarians, and would rather spend their time enjoying life than creating taxonomies for their home computers.
The world is definitely changing quickly. I’m an English major who became a librarian, so I had a huge collection of books from everyone from Atwood to Zola. The realization that I could get the text for most of my books on my kobo had me giving away about 3/4 of that 2000+ book collection.
Librarians need to think about the supply of used books that will result from millions of used books flooding the market, and the accessibility of those books to people who are not used to working with digital formats.
It would be kind of nice to organize all of the garbage society has collected over the past 50 years. It doesn’t mean the time invested will be worth it.
Ryan, I agree, but while most people don’t want to spend time creating taxonomies, many people do have an impulse to hoard files they have downloaded, be they pdf documents, or music files, or–as the post I first linked to indicated–video files. There is a desire to _have_ something on one’s hard drive.
Perhaps there is a certain mistrust of the cloud.
But, I also agree that books are becoming devalued in the e-book era which we have entered. I fear that people will begin to believe that the books on their e-book readers or their hard drives are real, and those books on their shelves are somehow less real.