Kicking off the Archive-Along

Sparked by a simple comment in a chat room a few weeks ago, Diane of Crafty Pod and I have put together a special blog-project on the subject of archiving your online work. The Archive-Along kicks off today, and is aimed at helping you explore various ways to create online and hard copy portfolios of some of your best online work.

Part of what interested me in this subject was my work on covering the STS-130 mission for MAKE. All my work for that project was online, and I wrote some of my favorite stories of my career during that time. And then I started to wonder .... where does all that work go? Hitting "post" sends it out into the virtual cosmos, and while folks read and commented on the stories, once they were out there for a while it just felt like they were kind of ... gone. I thought about how I'll want to share these stories with my kids and grandkids years from now and realized that, unless I was proactive with my archiving, I might not be able to.

Diane and I started brainstorming on the idea of archiving our work, and realized this is a great opportunity to engage the blogging community at-large (and not just crafters!) to share ways to make sure your best work is preserved and to see what other ideas you may be able to offer.

Even if you haven't been "published" on large web sites, it's important to go ahead and start developing good content archiving habits. It's also a great way to have one go-to spot to share your best work with potential publishers. Regardless of your level of blogging, project writing or experience, joining in on the Archive-Along is the first step to making sure your work never goes "poof" with no record left behind.

Over the next two weeks, Diane and I will share tutorials on various methods of creating digital and hard copy archives of your work. We encourage you to follow along and post summaries of your results and experience in the comments here. As you create your online portfolios, be sure to share them in the comments as well. Also be sure to keep up with the main Archive-Along page where we'll keep track of all our tutorials and feedback from participants.

Lastly, head over to the Archive-Along Flickr group and grab an Archive-Along button for the side bar for your blog! We're looking forward to helping you (and ourselves) get more organized, develop solid archiving habits and give all your hard work the care and curating it deserves!