Personal archives are a set of documents in any format that are created, acquired, or received by an individual and provide evidence of an individual’s activities (Dictionary Working Group of the Society of American Archivists, 2024). They not only include letters, memoirs, diaries, photo albums, articles, legal documents, certificates, and other printed or written records, but also include electronic documents, emails, blogs, digital photos, videos, audio tapes, websites, and other digital records. The storage, management, and access of these digital records relies on the specific information and communication devices that are used. Personal archives have indispensable historical, cultural, and evidential value for an individual, a family, and society. Their importance results from their ability to provide unique views of events; represent individuals and their richly individualistic activities; offer evidence of the underlying processes behind achievements and historical events; document the creative process; and bring the world of the past alive in evocative ways (John et al., 2010).

Since the 1980s, with the application of electronic products, such as personal computers, digital cameras, and smartphones, and the popularity of the Internet, it has become extremely convenient for individuals to generate and store digital archives (Zhao et al., 2019). Individuals can easily generate and accumulate information resources in quantities, formats and types of complexity comparable to past collections in libraries or archives (Lee, 2011). However, they face challenges of digital stewardship, distributed assets, value and accumulation, and retrieval from long-term storage (Marshall, 2008).

Personal archiving, which is the behaviour of creating, acquiring, receiving, organising, preserving, retrieving, and utilising personal archives that are related to individuals and have preservation values, is no longer a problem that can be effectively solved by simple storage; it also requires categorisation, storage, migration and backup to ensure that it can be stored securely and completely and used over time. It is clear that personal archiving has shifted from traditional common sense to literacy-based competencies that require specialised knowledge and skills. Scientists, teachers and the general public should acquire the necessary personal-archiving knowledge and skills to meet the challenges of the ‘digital dark ages’ (Kuny, 1998).

It is the duty of the library and archival community to provide the general public with professional guidelines for personal archiving and enhance their personal-archiving literacy (Cushing, 2016; Becker and Nogues, 2012). Reasonable and effective personal-archiving guidelines, or literacy-enhancement programs, must be based on a scientific and rigorous personal-archiving knowledge system. However, academic work on the theoretical framework, or body of knowledge, on personal archiving is currently immature. Huang et al. (2021a) used in-depth interviews and grounded theory to construct the knowledge composition of archivists' personal archiving and found that it had a kernel of archiving, categorisation, organisation, preservation and authentication.

However, related studies have also found that archivists' personal-archiving practices face dilemmas, such as the archival ocean and digitisation anxiety, in the digital age, and that the essence of this lies in the lack of a professional-grade deep understanding of modern information and communication technology and the appropriate use of their derivatives (Huang et al., 2021b; Huang and Zhong, 2021). Moreover, research on personal archiving in the computer-science field focuses on the effective organisation and retrieval of massive personal archives (Trullemans and Signer, 2014; Zhao et al., 2014), information security of archives (Chen and Zhu, 2017) and the improvement of archiving efficiency (Liu et al. 2022). All these are real problems that must urgently be solved to address the above dilemmas.

The organisation, retrieval, security and backup of archive information are topics of common concern and cross-fertilisation between archival science and computer science (Liu, et al., 2022); therefore, relevant computer-science knowledge and skills should be an integral part of personal archiving. However, research has not yet answered the question of what knowledge and skills in the vast body of computer science are necessary and effective for personal archiving.

We believe that experts with a background in computer science and working in information and communication-related fields have a better understanding of the principles and technologies of computer systems, networks, programs, file systems, databases, and storage and information security. Moreover, they are good at applying their professional knowledge to solve the practical problems of personal archiving. In addition, the computer-science knowledge and skills they use in personal archiving are those that should be available. Therefore, one of the best ways to acquire a body of computer-science knowledge in the personal-archiving field is by generalising from the personal-archiving practices of computer-science practitioners.

Therefore, this study focused on the knowledge and skills needed to manage, maintain, and access personal digital archives in the field of computer science. We conducted in-depth interviews with twenty-one people who have a professional background in computer science, are engaged in information and communication-related work and have relatively rich experience in personal archiving. We adopted the grounded theory to explore the composition of computer-science knowledge and its method of applying personal archiving. We also attempted to generalise the knowledge and skills required for managing, maintaining, and accessing personal digital archives, considering the personal archiving practices of computer-science practitioners. We aim to contribute to the construction of a personal-archiving knowledge system, provide theoretical support for the release of personal-archiving guides to the general public by relevant organisations, and implement personal-archiving literacy education.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, personal archiving has attracted the attention of researchers in the fields of library and information science and computer science. Library and information science is devoted to researching the value orientation and behaviour of personal archiving (Guo, 2018), considering email (Whittaker et al., 2006), smartphones (Hand, 2016), blogs and social media (Zhou et al., 2018) as important auxiliary tools for personal archiving. It explores how archival institutions, libraries, and archivists can intervene in and take responsibility for storing personal digital archives on their shelves (Burrows, 2006), and try to provide professional guidance on personal archiving for the general public (Cushing, 2016; Becker and Nogues, 2012).

Researchers in the computer-science field focus on how to use modern information technology to solve the problems of tools, labelling, retrieval and security in personal archiving, and mainly focus on three aspects.

Firstly, they develop personal-archiving tools. In the face of large and widely distributed personal digital records, the primary challenge is how to effectively manage them. Although the operating systems of ordinary computers and mobile devices can basically manage personal digital archives stored on the devices, it is difficult to implement systematic management, organisation, backup and retrieval. Therefore, researchers in the field of computer science are more concerned with developing personal-archiving tools, such as Gray Area (Bergman et al., 2019), Stuff I've Seen (Boardman and Sasse, 2004) and the WebBox (Van Kleek et al., 2012). Some of these have received good market responses and assist in storing, organising, retrieving and accessing personal digital archives.

Secondly, they design and optimise the labelling and retrieval algorithms for personal archives. Personal archives have personalised characteristics, with various forms of public management and storage of personal digital archives; however, they all face the problems of effective management, convenient retrieval and access, etc. Therefore, labelling and retrieval have attracted considerable attention.

Researchers are committed to considering the impact of document importance on the storage and retrieval of personal archives (Bergman et al. 2009; Li, 2011). They use semantic technology to assist in the labelling of personal archives (Weippl et al., 2007; Zhou and Zhong, 2010); try to address the barriers to organising and managing personal information posed by diverse data sources (Jones et al., 2008; Berlin et al., 2017); reduce the trouble caused by different system architectures on the maintenance and access of personal data (Van Kleek et al., 2012; Liu and Zhu, 2013); and explore more optimal personal-archive retrieval methods (Zhao et al., 2014) and storage solutions (Wang et al., 2008). They hope to manage and share cross-platform personal files (Trullemans and Signer, 2014), collaborate and query personal cloud files (Bergman et al., 2019), and assist in the interaction between users and computers in mobile environments (Chen et al., 2010) to enhance the user’s personal archiving experience.

Thirdly, they address the backup and security of personal archives. The digitisation of file and storage forms is one of the biggest differences between traditional and digital files, and the security and backup of files in the context of new technologies and equipment are causes for concern. Related research is committed to solving many technical problems of storage, arrangement and backup of personal digital archives.

Research has found that the proliferation of personal digital archives places new demands on data synchronisation and backup (Song et al., 2011), leading to the emergence of cloud-storage solutions (Ai et al., 2011). In addition, to solve the potential problems of data loss and information leakage, blockchain technology has been used to control access rights (Zheng et al., 2018; Zichichi et al., 2020), which ensure that the data are real, accurate and difficult to tamper with. Embedding encryption algorithms further protects the security level of personal privacy (Li, 2021; Xian, 2022), which ensures the efficiency and security of the users in managing and utilising their personal archives.

Overall, personal archiving in the digital age has become an academic issue that should be discussed specifically. Moreover, researchers in the fields of computer science and library and information science have explored the issues of achieving safe storage, effective management and convenient use of personal digital archives from the perspective of information technology. However, this is based on the public’s perceptions, needs and behaviour in the management, storage and retrieval of personal digital archives, as well as the selection, evaluation and use of archiving tools, among other issues.

Archiving tools are only the foundation. More relevant knowledge and skills are required to support the public’s better understanding, storage and use of personal digital archives and the various archiving tools available on the market. From this perspective, we should discover and understand what and how computer-science knowledge and skills are used by professional computer practitioners in personal digital archiving, and understand and systematise the computer-science knowledge required for personal archiving.

Together with the findings of our existing research on the composition of the archival body of knowledge, we can more accurately and appropriately construct a knowledge framework that can provide effective guidance for improving the public’s personal-archiving literacy.

This study employed grounded theory, an exploratory research methodology, to code the interview textual material at three levels using the Nvivo 11 Plus qualitative-analysis software. It also refined and revised the composition of computer-science knowledge in the personal-archiving area until theoretical saturation was reached, through an analytical mindset of continuous comparison of the interview textual content.

This study found that the computer-science knowledge and skills involved in personal archiving mainly focus on the working principles and performance of computer- and network-related software and hardware devices; the storage, organisation, and retrieval rules of operating systems and databases; and various software tools that can meet personal archiving needs. These components represent the core knowledge and skills associated with computer literacy. At the same time, it was found that owing to the higher level of computer literacy among computer-science practitioners, they have a stronger need for personal archiving and higher personal archiving efficiency. The findings of this study can provide constructive suggestions for improving the body of knowledge in the personal-archiving field and promoting public personal archiving.

Personal archiving, specifically personal digital archiving, has attracted the attention of researchers in library and information science as well as computer science. However, for the public’s personal archiving, the type of computer-science knowledge that can be applied, and whether it has become the exclusive right of computer-science practitioners owing to technical barriers, have not been answered by existing research, and this study made beneficial attempts.

This study showed that computer-science knowledge is embodied in the cognition, archiving, organisation, storage and retrieval of personal archives. Computer science and technology cognition are the core, mainly focusing on archiving skills, document naming and sorting, archival security and storage, and archival retrieval in the midst of knowledge and action. Computer-science practitioners exhibit common-sense regarding paper archives, but their professionalism in managing, maintaining, and accessing personal digital archives was highlighted, which is mainly reflected by the following three aspects.

First, these practitioners have a good understanding of the working principles and performance of software and hardware devices related to computers and networks. Therefore, they are better able to understand the characteristics, advantages, and potential risks of commercial systems including common personal computers, USB drives, CDs, hard drives, and cloud storage. They particularly value the privacy and security of personal digital archives and can use relevant equipment to manage personal digital archives in a reasonable manner.

Second, they have knowledge, skills, and practical experience related to software development and are better able to understand the storage, organisation, and retrieval rules of operating systems and databases. They can flexibly apply knowledge such as the file management rules of operating systems and naming conventions of computer software to personal digital archives to meet daily management and retrieval needs.

Third, they are adept at using various tools to meet their personal archiving needs. These respondents were adept at using commercial software tools to manage personal digital archives, including using facial recognition tools to manage photo archives, constructing a private cloud (such as NAS) to store and backup personal digital documents, and using tools such as Everything to retrieve personal digital documents.

Our findings indicate that computer science techniques are not involved in the design and optimisation of algorithms and system development. The computer-science knowledge composition in the field of personal archiving is similar to the knowledge requirements for computer literacy. Specifically, it is the understanding and application of computer and network fundamentals, such as the composition of computer and network systems, values, data, hardware, programming, etc., that have a substantial impact on the personal-archiving practices of computer-science practitioners.

In short, the application of computer-science knowledge in the personal-archiving domain is almost exclusively focused on computer literacy, meaning that non-computer-science practitioners can acquire these knowledge and skills. It also suggests that the value of constructing a personal-archiving knowledge system is that the public or archivists implementing it do not necessarily need to receive a specialised computer-science education, but should have basic computer literacy. In other words, basic knowledge in the fields of computers and networks, information organisation, and retrieval must be incorporated into a personal-archiving knowledge system, so that the public can make full and rational use of a variety of platforms and tools, based on an understanding of the principles of computers and networks, to improve the efficiency of personal archiving.

This study also found that in their personal-archival behaviour, computer-science practitioners have formed demand-driven and knowledge-determined action mechanisms. These mechanisms differ from and are complementary to the knowledge-application mechanisms of archivists, which primarily concern the awareness of personal archives (Huang et al., 2021a).

The demand comes from external needs, while consciousness comes from internal drives. The different knowledge application mechanisms of the computer-science practitioners and archivists reveal that archival knowledge and computer-science knowledge have their own strengths. To further enhance the motivation of personal archiving, it is necessary to further integrate knowledge and tools from different fields.

One limitation of this study is the composition of the sample of computer-science practitioners interviewed. Although a theoretical sample was conducted, it was only possible to sample from those with whom we could make connections and those who were willing to participate. Therefore, the sample may have been biased because it was not a random selection of all computer-science practitioners.

Finally, personal archiving is a common phenomenon in people’s lives. While we explored the issue of knowledge composition and use mechanisms in the field of archiving in our previous study, this study focused on the knowledge composition and use mechanisms in the field of computer science. Whether other disciplines and fields have more distinctive knowledge systems and use mechanisms remains to be further explored.

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