Have you ever looked around your photo studio, home or small office and thought about the photos, the paper and electronic information you get through the mail box and email every day? What happens if you need those receipts from 3 year’s ago because you are being audited. Many of your financial records, bank statements, invoices from the phone and water company are saved both electronically and on paper. You pay bills on line in some cases and in others still pay by cheque at the bank. What about all of the photos you’ve taken? Some are prints, some on 35 mm slides and yet others stored on your computer. How can you get at them if all the equipment you need to look at them keeps changing? Can you replace the lamp in that slide projector? What about the tape recordings and videos? And since you got that flat-bed scanner, you are now scanning photos and negatives into your computer so you can get at them more easily and dispose of the paper. It all needs to be managed so that you can find it when you want to celebrate that 60th birthday, or need it for that tax audit. But how can the myriad types of information be organized and described? How can the important ones be preserved for the long term? How should email messages be handled? You need answers to these questions so that you can work effectively to get the information you need when you need it.

The guide is a series of modules which provide a series of high level tools and methods you can use to get control of your paper and electronic information, whether it’s for your family or your small business. In addition, you will find links to other resources which expand further on the points in each module. The quick tips give some hints about what you should be aware of and how you can simplify things.

Presentation, which was delivered during Delos summer school 2008 (Tirrenia, June 2008). It provides a short introduction to preservation metadata, including what preservation metadata is intended to accomplish, the OAIS information model, PREMIS and other relevant standards, significant properties, and some key issues.

It gives a general overview of what preservation metadata is all about, and helps the audience to see that it is neither boring nor cut-and-dried, and that there are some interesting issues for both practitioners and researchers.