This is the time of year faculty and postdocs with new jobs move to new offices, and when students return from summer break. As a result, it is also the time many thefts occur as doors are left unlocked and boxes are stacked, even for short periods, on sidewalks. A favorite target of thieves is laptop computers, and as we use laptops to produce more of our knowledge, we can ill afford to have this basic tool get lost, stolen, or strayed.
Risa Gorelick, an assistant professor of English at Monmouth University in New Jersey, told Inside Higher Ed recently of having her home burgled and her laptop stolen. The perpetrator took not only the laptop, but also two flash drives, where she stored file backups. This thief took much more than than machinery; he or she took months of work on a book project Gorelick had been working on.
Gorelick admits that she let her guard down. As a grad student, she took extra precautions with her dissertation work, even storing a copy in a plastic bag in her freezer. Her lesson: be prepared for the worst. Make extra copies of your work, and store them away in a different physical location than the main system.
The comments on Gorelick's article offer some simple and inexpensive ideas, from online backup services (see PC World's review of these services) to sending copies to yourself using free e-mail services with abundant storage (e.g., G-mail or Yahoo). Or you can carve out a spot in your freezer.
