It's Preservation Week!

This week, April 24–30, is Preservation Week for 2016.  While the primary focus is for libraries, archives, and other formal repositories to think about the conditions and preservation needs of their collections, it is a good time for everyone to consider what they have that they would like to have last a long time.  For modern genealogists, this can easily encompass original documents, books, photographs and slides, recorded interviews, family movies, and digital media, whether converted from the previous formats or natively digital.  You might also have clothing and other physical heirlooms that can't really be digitized.

The American Library Association has a page full of resources for Preservation Week (and the whole year!).  You can find information on how to preserve your items and on disaster recovery (which I hope you never need to use).  Two free Webinars are offered this year, "Reformatting Audiotape" on April 26 and "Preserving Your Digital Life" on April 28  Also available are links to previous years' presentations, such as ""Preservation of Family Photographs", "Family Textiles", and "Disaster Preparedness", all free.

If you would like to host a Preservation Week event, there's a link to information for that.  There's even a link for preservation geared to military families!

Don't you feel motivated to go out and buy a bunch of archival boxes for your documents now?