For many of us, the biggest threat to the safety of our family history information may not be papers yellowing with age or photos fading in the sunlight but instead the possibility of our computer crashing or our phone dying a painful death in the washing machine.

These days nearly everyone keeps important family information such as photos, scanned documents, GEDCOMs, and other files on their computers, digital cameras, cell phones, and tablets. While most people recognize that documents and photos are fragile, it’s easy to forget that electronic files are just as fragile, only in different ways. In fact, in some ways, electronic files are more at risk. While the old tactic of “store and ignore” might work for papers or photos, it doesn’t work for electronic files. With technology constantly changing, anything left alone for more than a handful of years is going to become difficult to access or read—something you’ve experienced if you’ve ever tried to access files on an old floppy disk.

Read the article “Family History Preservation: Preserving Electronic Information” to get the details of two main tasks that can save the day for your electronic files: organizing and backing up your information.