As a student, record keeping is important because it enables me consider my education route since I have graduated from paper notes taking, and graduated to college where students are allowed to make notes on paper books. As a master degree student, I will love to keep records of note taking practices since masters studies does not necessarily require one to write on paper. I will keep these note taking records so that when looking back in my education times, I will understand where I have come from.

I think I need to keep such records because of its safety and easy retrieval in the future. In as much as the world is becoming global and computerized, the same computers might crash and, therefore, it becomes easy to lose information. Therefore, keeping handwritten records enable easy retrieval when the computer crashes. These records can be kept as long as they can serve the process of retrieval (Faulkhead, Evans, & Morgan, 2005). However, paper records cannot be kept for such a long time because, if not stored properly, paper combines with atmospheric air and react changing color and handwritings as well, and so there is a need for backing up paper records as well. However, just for student purposes, paper records can be kept for a maximum of four years which is the duration of a specified course with reference to future retrieval and for learning purposes.

As a method of record keeping, I think about the coming generation too because in the near future, paper records and manuscripts will not be used. Everything will be stored in digital records and, therefore, the obligation to keep the said records for future generations. Printed academic photos can be kept to show how technological changes occurred (Evans, 2014). Since there are many people with computers out there and backing up the same information, I believe I am obligated to do more   backups, and my major responsibility is to use multiple formats and conventional storage types. I remember one time, I had my final undergraduate college essays printed and backed up in my computer, but then I lost all of them when my computer crashed, and since I had done away with the paper noted I had to find a way to retrieve them. In the future things will be different as technology will demand everything to be stored in electronic formats and thus the need to keep handwritten records.

I feel that I am compelled to function in paper storage activities as a major role with the future generation in mind. After reading Evidence of me, I realized that most individuals have resorted to using electronic supporting documents and in turn forgot about papers. With actual paper, losing documents becomes more deliberate and this made me think about the diaries I wrote while I was still a child but deliberately destroyed them in my teenage years. As a Chinese citizen I want to believe that with the ever changing technology, handwritten documents should be kept as a way to remember our old cultures. Technology of the coming days will have people using touch screen computers, computers that accept command and people will no longer remember how to use pen and paper.

Most times I wish that I had kept them not only because of looking back and seeing how much they could be of importance, but also looking back and seeing the evidence of how I reasoned as a child and the memories of particular events (McKemmish,1996). I believe museums, photographers, students, instructors and even film makers would benefit from these kinds of records. After reading McKemmish’s article, the author also makes considerations of electronic documents and discusses how archivists have developed ways of becoming involved at the beginning with each record, and also provides a discussion of how archivists can use personal papers to turn them into an archives collection for future generations to see.