Personal Collections and Personal Information Management in the Family Context

People who produce something notable for future generations during their lives often have collections of documents and artifacts with potential cultural heritage value, but such collections can be lost forever just as easily as preserved and enjoyed by future generations. This paper reports on five case studies of significant individuals’ collections to explore how such individuals and their families value and manage their collections, the decisions they make and challenges they face in doing so, and what effects these and other challenges may have on the transference of their collections to preservation institutions. We found that family bonds play a significant role when deciding what to do with a collection, as does having the awareness, skills, and support to organize collections and negotiate with libraries, archives, and museums. Participants viewed personal collections as proof of their professional identities and as having valuable storytelling potential. However, the locus of responsibility for safeguarding personal collections of significant individuals remains unclear. The paper outlines how to more effectively organize personal collections and protect them from being lost and contributes to closing a knowledge gap at the intersection of several areas of information science, namely information behavior, personal information management, and cultural heritage management.