Life and Times of Personal Information Management: Memento, Memory, or Memento Mori?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This panel/round‐table discussion will explore contemporary challenges within our everyday personal information management practices when it comes to how we select, store, and prepare our life histories for ourselves and others. With all the affordances and access provided by digital technologies, we collect information across a variety of platforms, modes, and mediums, be they documents, text files, images, or audio. Not all of this information is meaningful to us in the long‐term, but nevertheless, some of our most valuable information does get entangled in this chaos. Issues discussed include maintaining, organizing, and accessing our information, not to mention how others access what we want to pass on to them. Challenges include technological obsolescence, privacy concerns, cultural and generational changes, family dynamics, and even memory loss as we age. We will also explore solutions and propose an ‘idea box’ for how we can prepare for the future of our personal information, such as creating and implementing information legacy plans, digitization, storage, and access permissions.