archives 2.0, the archives hub and aim25
DESCRIPTION
Approaches to 'Archives 2.0' from the perspective of the Archives Hub and AIM25 servicesTRANSCRIPT
16 March 2009
Innovative ways, sustainable means
The Archives Hub and AIM25
Jane Stevenson and Geoff Browell
16 March 2009
Hub and AIM25 benefits
• Locate archives across a range of institutions
• Save time and resources
• Search by subject / name / place
• Focus for archive community
• Promotion of standards for robust and sustainable descriptions
• Innovation and experimentation
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JISC Information Environment
• Providing a range of meaningful, rich and innovative methods of accessing electronic materials
• A collaborative landscape of service providers who work together to seamlessly cater for the needs of the community on a national basis
• Underpinned by real world interoperability, based upon a common standards framework
JISC Information Environment Development Strategy [2001]
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British Archives: the vision
“Our vision of the future of British archives is of a flow of archival information which takes account of all the opportunities offered by digital networks and offers opportunity for exploration - historical, personal, social - to the broadest possible range of people wherever they can use it - in the home, the classroom or the office.”
British Archives: The Way Forward (NCA, 2000)
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The Archives 2.0 Manifesto
• Positive• Active • Responsive• Open• Interactive• Experimental• User-focused• Participatory
http://www.archivesnext.com
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A new Mindset
• An open and flexible approach to access, archives 2.0 should, fundamentally, be about developing a collaborative, transparent and user-focused approach, based on agreed standards, that enables others to engage with us and with the data that we hold on their own terms.
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Implementation
• How to move forward in a sustainable way?
• What underlies an effective Archives 2.0 approach?
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Underlying principles of the Hub
• Data – standards, quality
• Software – open source
• System – interoperable, distributed
• Development – user-focused, innovative
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Data
• EAD – Encoded Archival Description
• ISAD(G)
• Indexing standards
• Manual data editing
• Validation through Template for data creation and editing
• Training and raising awareness
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Software
• Cheshire 3 and Cheshire for Archives– Open source– Flexible– In-house development
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Interoperable System
• Ability to interoperate – exchange data between systems
• Data working for benefit of users
• The Archives Hub and AIM25 - EAD
• CALM and AdLib
• Datasets?
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Distributed System
• Spokes institutions– control– administer– customised web interface
• Hosted spokes
http://kirkland.dur.ac.uk/ead/
http://cheshire.cent.gla.ac.uk/ead/search.html
Flickr cc licence : Thomas Hawk
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Open System
• Machine-to-machine interfaces
• Z39.50; OAI-PMH; SRU
• Genesis portal for Women’s Studies – SRU search of the Hub
To be a part of the JISC-IE, content providers need to support machine- oriented interfaces to their resources.
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Development
• Steering Committee
• Contributors’ Forum
• Contributors’ Community
• Blog, newsletters, email lists
• National Archives Network
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National Archive Network
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AIM25
• 10 years-old• 10,000 descriptions• 100 partners• Up to 2m hits per month• Google-visible• Becoming a hub for London• LMA latest partner• 2008-2009 upgrade – new descriptions, improved
website, interoperability with M25• Partner-led with central indexing standards• Forum to lead on standards, fundraising, sector issues
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AIM25 and Archives 2.0
• Asked ourselves - who uses it? • Avoid features for sake of it – what is the
demand? Do users have the time – vast majority of users are under 1 minute
• If colleagues don’t know what a tag cloud or social networking are, will users?
• Can we afford it or do others do it better already – Facebook?
• Most users are probably not Californian teenagers
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AIM25: What did we do?
• Moderated Web 2.0 – democracy or benign dictatorship?
• Avoided social networking
• Hybrid tag clouds
• Information alerts on new collections – RSS
• Improving searching with cross searching with M25 – (‘isn’t it all just information?’)
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Benefits
• More contemporary feel• Help with fundraising• Users able to sift information more effectively and cross-
search• Helps cultivate a ‘brand’. As catalogue information
becomes more easily retrievable and machine-readable, so the ‘extra features’ and the trusted name become more important
• These extras might include podcast lectures, National Curriculum tie-ins or dramatic re-enactments, extra bibliographic or catalogue content (‘you’re interested in that item, have you seen this?’), mapping or the ability to interact with other users
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Right and wrong reasons
• Right: improves the work of Archives, collecting, preserving and making records accessible for current and future generations
• Wrong: for its own sake; next ‘thing’; pressure to be fashionable; ‘cure-all’ or technical shortcut
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Archives 2.0: Barriers
• Legal barriers (can’t publish everything)• Cost barriers (hidden costs such as training, IT
development, policing UGC)• Conflicting audiences (all things to all men)• Over-expectations (limited resources of sector): will
users become restive if they are used to Flickr or Facebook and get FORTRAN?
• Can’t manage resulting demand• Knowledge/training gap (many archivists are unfamiliar
with standards or terminology)• Danger of following fashion for its own sake – when is a
paradigm shift not a paradigm shift?
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Searching Questions
• How far do we want users to be sharing and engaging – do they want to?
• Danger of users thinking everything is up for grabs, ‘Can’t I just publish any photograph I come across in your archive?’
• Role of the finding aid and its integrity – reliability of catalogues. What role is there for expert input?
• Danger of ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’
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Talking points
• Better market research needed• Greater standardisation of statistics to gauge usage• Do users want it and can we afford the time, money and
energy to handle the consequences? • Will management understand the implications or do they
think it is technological panacea? (‘Can’t you just digitise everything?’)
• Archivists need to understand the implications in order to educate institutions of the costs/benefits
• Technologising the relationships which archivists have always cultivated – with donors, users and the public. So is it doing more of what we do well already?
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Talking points
• Do we get the basics right first? (cataloguing backlogs, basic digitisation and improved physical access)
• Standards – electronic and ethical • The role of the archivist from intercessor/
intermediary to facilitator in a personal relationship or journey of discovery through records: an Archive equivalent of the Protestant Reformation?
• Knowledge, expertise and interpretive skills remain at the heart of the profession
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Archives 2.0 will be…
• Relevant
• Sustainable
• Skills-based
• Fun
• Result in greater co-operation and networking between all types of archive institution
• A journey not a destination
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Contact details
• Jane Stevenson: [email protected]
• Geoff Browell: [email protected]
Visit the National Archives Network social space:http://archivesnetwork.ning.com/
Check out the Hub blog:http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/blog/Check out the Archives Hub twitterhttp://twitter.com/archiveshub