Digital Personal Memories: The Archiving of the Self and Public History

Abstract

By providing a facilitated access to data storage, digital technologies seemto make expression and preservation of the self more straightforward. They reconfi-gure the means and forms of access to data, thus also affecting the relationships andparticipation of individuals in heritagization and history, and potentially impactinghistorians. This renews questions that scholars already know well, such as the placeof memories in the making of history, and that of self-narratives.Examining how“ordinary voices”can/could archive digital/digitized data anddocuments, this chapter aims at investigating this increased interest in preservingthe self and memories, the heritagization of these data, and finally the role playedby user-generated contributions in Digital Public History projects and in historicalresearch in general.