Personal digital information archiving among students of social sciences and humanities

Introduction. As both academic citizens and active participants in information society who use information, students produce huge amounts of personal digital data and documents. It is therefore important to raise questions about their awareness, responsibility, tendencies and activities they undertake to preserve their collective digital heritage. Method. A survey was conducted amongst students from four different Croatian universities. 227 online questionnaires were completed. Analysis. Quantitative analysis was used to describe the students' answers and to identify their habits and practices of archiving personal digital information. Results. There is a positive correlation between respondents who are aware of the importance of managing digital data and documents and those who actually put an effort into it. Students often plan their activities when it comes to a preservation process, but mostly for the data and documents they view as important or that they might need in the future. Students' managing practices are primarily based on organizing documents into folders by the criteria of document type and importance, while using specific tools to manage their collections is very rare. Conclusions. Humanities and social sciences students are aware of their private digital legacy, and they endeavour to manage and archive it using basic, common organizing strategies and practices.