Individuals are capturing and storing an ever-increasing amount of digital information about or for themselves, including emails, documents, articles, portfolios of work, digital images, and audio and video recordings. These personal collections created by leading researchers and authors, or by “ordinary” individuals, are often of immense future importance to research in a broad range of subjects including literary criticism, history, and history of science.
The Digital Lives project is designed to provide a major pathfinding study of these personal digital collections and their relationship with research repositories. The project team drawn from the British Library, University College London and University of Bristol is led by Neil Beagrie of the British Library (the lead partner) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
The research for Digital Lives commenced in September 2007 and will run for 18 months to March 2009. Subscribe to this blog for the latest project news and developments, as well as comment and opinion from members of the project team. The project webpages provide access to further information about Digital Lives, publications and other research outputs from the project as they are finalised and released.