iPad memento use

It’s been over a year now since I loaded my digitised mementos onto my iPad using the SideBooks application – plenty enough time  to assess how useful it is having them on there. I don’t think having them on the iPad has necessarily increased how much I look at them, however, every time I do look at them I’m struck by how easy and simply wondrous it is to have all this material so immediately accessible on a tablet device. Being able to flick through all my old pocket diaries is particularly amazing. Despite my satisfaction with the iPad version, I know that at least once in the last few months, I wanted to find something out from my diaries, but opened up the laptop versions because I’d simply forgotten I had them on the iPad. This was probably because of a) infrequency of use, and b) because I have uppermost in my mind that the masters of the files are held in the laptop.  This combination will probably be generally applicable to most archival collections and will need to be addressed whenever a collection is made available on an alternative device.

I’ve now completed everything I set out to do initially on memento management. The challenge still remains of how best to make these items more visible so that they can be enjoyed and experienced to the full. However that is another piece of work for the future.

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