Personal Development Ideas

Overdependence on virtual personal development libraries March 1, 2017

By Dennis Mellersh

One of the traps we can fall into in building a collection of personal development knowledge materials is to rely too heavily on the online digital/cloud/ virtual versions of the materials.

In creating our personal databases of personal improvement information, for example, we may create shortcut after shortcut; add more and more favorites on our devices, and depend too much on services such as YouTube to be a safe depository for various media that we like.

Unless we make our own personal copies of this self-help media, it can all disappear in an instant.  And some of it cannot easily be replaced, if at all.

Personally, I have so many internet shortcuts in various folders that it takes my anti-virus program twice as long as it should when I do a complete computer scan. I should have this material on an external drive/storage device. Or print hard copies in the case of articles.

There are many reasons why online materials simply disappear. A few:

* Copyright disputes result in take-down orders
* Someone decides that some material is “inappropriate” for its service to carry
* The uploader loses interest and cancels their channel, website, blog, podcast
* The service/material is blocked because of territorial distribution rights
* Technical glitches wipe out large swathes of material on a server which was not properly backed up
* A service decides it is too much expense/trouble to archive older materials. And so, simply deletes all of it

Even “bricks and mortar” professional curatorial/custodial venues are not immune from suddenly deciding not to feature the personal development potential materials that we like.

I remember years ago my local library deciding to go on an update “modernizing” rampage and removing all VCR material and carrying only DVDs instead.

Of course there were numerous VCR tapes that I wanted to always be able to refer periodically; but now they were gone (sold? destroyed? given away?) and apparently were no longer stored centrally in the city’s library system.

If we want a permanent personal library of personal growth materials, it needs to be real, not virtual.