Cloud

When housed locally, a digital collection becomes a silo – closed to knowledge sharing and creation with other entities, and dependent upon the people who manage it.

Digital materials are complex and dynamic, and require evolving tools for access and preservation. By storing and maintaining digital collections in a cloud environment, new tools or processes can be implemented universally in response to technological advances and user requirements.

Cloud storage has become a popular method for archiving and sharing files; some services are free or have minimal costs and provide universal access. Dropbox and Google Drive are free or low-cost options to store and share digital files, but files stored in these free environments have no contextual metadata. There are also no guarantees of data integrity, migration or monitoring.

The context and documentation of the files through metadata, coupled with reliable storage strategies, is the foundation of a robust personal archive. Free services do not protect the intellectual property rights of creators, and there is also no guarantee that the company will stay in business or will provide long-term access to materials. Using free cloud services requires an awareness of free cloud storage limitations, with attention to the associated metadata and documentation. You may want to get your data out of the cloud at a future date - metadata and documentation will help with making sense of the collection when migrating it to new storage systems.

Several commercial options provide trusted digital repository services but the costs can be prohibitive for low-budget producers. Reserving a portion of funding for a paid preservation service can alleviate the worry and manual maintenance of local storage but be prepared to pay for long-term storage and data management.

Using free or paid cloud storage services is an acceptable option, but remember to use at least two local storage options and one cloud service for redundancy.