Neil Beagrie, “Plenty of Room at the Bottom? Personal Digital Libraries and Collections” D-Lib Magazine 11.6 (June 2005)
Extract:
The growing abundance of personal data and collection outlined in this article will present numerous challenges to individuals, including: how to physically secure such material sometimes over decades; how to protect privacy; how to organize and extract information and to use it effectively; and for material intended to be shared, how to effectively present and control access by different groups of users.
The shift towards personal collection, and to services aimed at supporting activity from the desktop, will also lead to new forms of shared services, publishers and information banks, and will re-inforce informal social networks and mechanisms of communication.
Informal sharing of such collections by academics has always been important for peers and contemporaries. Arguably their importance for current scholarship is growing along with the power and reach of software tools and communications available to individuals to create, manage, and disseminate them.
