Archival description and discovery layers

Some years ago, Campbell Soups ran a campaign about their thick and rich soup range, one of which included Australia’s own Rose Porteous (I can’t find the link, perhaps someone cottoned on?). Anyway, I always think of that and, more academically, of Clifford Geertz’s ‘thick description’ when I think about the ways in which archives can describe their holdings. It’s not always the case, of course. Sometimes, time and pressure mean that holdings and archival authorities are described in minimalistic terms, but the potential for rich and thick description still exists, especially when contextual relationships between creators, functions and records are fully developed. It’s this that sets us aside from library description, and why archives generally don’t use the library MARC (MAchine Readable Catalogue) formats, even though there is a special set for archives (MARC-AMC).  Libraries describe the  individual elements of the soup – the pea, the bean, the meaty chunk, the liquid – on their own merit. The author statement can bring these elements together but doesn’t give a sense of how they interact. Archives describe the soup, and then the elements.

Given this difference, it’s been interesting to see how different archives have been included into broader, generally library based discovery layers. Our own TROVE is one such instance, and I’ve previously flagged how both the ANU Archives and PROV have added content to TROVE in my #GovHack posts. I’ve not seen much about what compromises had to be made, so I was very interested when the Digital Repository of Ireland brought out its guide to including archival description a few months ago.  The Digital Public Library of America has recently released a white paper for similar content. Both the DRI guidelines and the DPLA white paper use EAD (encoded archival description) as the major tool for exploring and exporting information. Both work within a fonds based hierarchical descriptive framework, and focus on the archival object or levels of description. The links made to archival authority and to function (Chris Hurley’s doer and deed) are minimal at best.

The DRI guideline is, by its nature, prescriptive. If you are looking for a good description of the elements within EAD and how they can be matched to standard elements in descriptive practice, then this is a good place to start.  The descriptions of each required and recommended element are clear, and provide some food for thought in Australian practice with regards to name, place and subject indexing of archival holdings. I think it would be relatively easy to implement the recommendations for a TROVE like discovery system (although, we have, as yet, to investigate why or whether we want one, and what we would expect to get out of it).

The DPLA white paper is, also by its nature, more complex, looking at comparative descriptive practices, meditating on the differences between library and archival description, and aggregated (fonds, collection, series, even Australian item level) description. It focuses, however, on individual digital objects, either a product of digitisation or a natively created in the digital environment, such as pages of books or individual photographs in an album. The working group looked at both description at a higher aggregated level (using the term ‘collection’) and for individual objects. Again, a number of examples are given for both, and some recommendations come from that. The working group is to be commended for the way in which they have approached the task at hand. Like the DRI guidelines, the white paper raises some important questions for Australian archivists looking at either a federated system, as proposed by Chris Hurley and others at the recent ASA 2016 conference, or in support of further work with TROVE.

 

Digital Preservation and sustainability

Over the past few months, there’s been a couple of interesting events in the realm of digital preservation. The first was the publication of the new UNESCO digital preservation guidelines – PERSIST (although UNESCO uses the term sustainability rather than preservation) . The second was the updated Digital Preservation Coalition Handbook.

PERSIST (Platform to enhance the sustainability of the information society transglobally) looks at guidelines for selecting digital materials – it’s necessarily rather broad and full of good intentions and motherhood statements. The guidelines look at national institutions, such as archives, museums and libraries, and suggests that where legislation exists regarding the deposit of materials such legislation should be broadened, if required, to include digital content. Both national and international bodies should be engaged in setting standards for the collection and maintenance of these materials. Copyright and digital rights management are briefly addressed in the next section on the legislative environment.

The next three sections look at libraries, archives and museum collections from the ‘think global: act local’ perpective. The first section, Thinking globally, suggests that libraries, faced with the ubiquity of social media, websites and internet content, will need to manage their legal deposit and selection criteria for ephemera carefully. It also suggests that libraries may need to focus on user requirements for maintaining content, rather than continually acquiring new content with view to preservation. Museums and galleries are flagged as needing to think about metadata for digital and digitised content and also for records about the collection. Archives, like libraries, face problems with shifting formats and systems. Libraries have the luxury of many copies, but archives may lose content that is not ‘born archival’ but which garners significance over time, simply because the formats in which the items are created are in themselves, ephemeral. Although specific issues are identified for each institutional type, the guidelines stress that many of these concerns cross collection boundaries.

The second section, Act locally, provides a range of selection techniques and criteria which are probably already familiar to institutions looking at collection policies and processes: comprehensive collections, focused on a region, time or person/organisation; representative sampling; criteria based selection – format, topic, and so on. It also suggests that there can be delayed appraisal in some circumstances: collect now, select later.

In addition, the guidelines provide a simple decision tree (sadly, not illustrated) which suggests institutions consider the following:

• Identify
• Legislative framework
• Select
  • significance
  • sustainability
  • availability
• Decide

Possibly of more interest and more utility are the appendices – the first looks at metadata for digital preservation, and manages to do so without using the PREMIS acronym. Three types of metadata are identified as useful for digital preservation; structural, descriptive and administrative. The second appendix provides useful terms and definitions.

The Digital Preservation Coalition Handbook is an online document (which can also be saved and printed as pdf), designed for managers and executives who are either new to the concepts of digital preservation or, through the handbook  and other learning, feel that they have a good grasp of the essentials but are by no means experts. Each section states the level of experience the section is aimed at, and provides some clear, simple discussions before going on to more nuts and bolts information like choosing providers, identifying formats, working through digitisation processes and decisions and more.  This is a far more detail and practical work than the Guidelines, but the two work well together.

Use the Guidelines to promote the importance of digital management and then follow up with the Handbook.

 

 

 

In which there are too many hashtags, again!

Barely had the American Library Association (#alaac2016) conference finished, when I became aware of a groundswell of European conferences and workshops.

The first to pop up was #DAMEU for, obviously, Digital Asset Management. This conference is of interest because of both its focus on how to manage current digital content (whether or not it is a copy of an analogue record) but also its focus on long term management and preservation. Formats, platforms, repositories – all the buzz words are there.

The second is #LIBER16,taking place in Helsinki, for European research libraries. There’s quite a bit of overlap with the #DAMEU conference, but unlike the ones in Hobart last week, I don’t think participants could run from one to the other. Once again, open access, data repositories, and the management and maintenance of data is being discussed.

And finally, for today at least, is #eu2016nl (#eunl2016), a conference held in the final week of the Dutch Presidency of the EU, and focusing on the ‘digitalisation’ of cultural heritage (their words and spelling, not mine). This looks at both digital platforms, but also digitisation programs and linked content through the mighty Europeana. The best quote so far is that it is time to focus on quality not quantity.

 

 

Links, distributions

It’s been a very disjointed sort of day.  I sat down yesterday to answer a query on AIPs, SIPS and DIPs by Chris Hurley over on the Archives and Records google group, and woke up this morning thinking about the need to clarify one of my points. Then over to twitter to catch up on the ACA conference I mentioned yesterday, and Peter van Garderen was the key note speaker, talking about access to archives, which included a link to his paper on decentralised collections. This seemed to me to be relevant to the ideas that Chris is discussing, so I was able to add it in to my response (told you I would cheat. Be grateful I didn’t just provide the link and publish. I also argued with people about copyright, but we won’t go there).

It’s my day off, the one for big thinking, but my mind is full of little links. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is based on the blog by Petra Dumbell, a PhD student at Curtin, for whom I am an associate supervisor. Petra too, was thinking about collections, but her idea was to create a link to people. At first I thought she was thinking about the People and Organisation entities in the Resource Description and Access protocols being used by entities like the National Library of Australia ( and which have a lot of similarities to archival authority records), and then I realised that she was talking about something like a persistent HumanLibrary program. I’m not sure I like the idea of being booked out for a coffee chat to talk about blogging for example, but the HumanLibrary idea hung around.

We can and should do more about providing insights into the people in the archive, the ones who use the collections and the staff who provide the access, develop appraisal programs and choose material.  It’s about shaking up stereotypes and expectations. There’s my colleague, Meg Travers, who is recreating the Trautonium, for example. However, there is another and perhaps more important issue here. Professor of Digital History, Tim Hitchcock, was talking on twitter about the role of archivists in helping historians develop and write a story. Archivists and librarians are being silenced, he feels; left out of the methodology and historiography that goes into a work of history. On the other hand, we as archivists struggle with ideas of agency and of objective and subjective appraisal.

As I looked at the feed for the ACA conference, I could see a theme developing about access to archives and to the stories within them. It’s also National Reconciliation Week here in Australia, and I thought, what if we had a HumanArchive program? It would require a great deal of sensitivity, but how empowering and enlightening would it be to talk to the subject of an archive file? To ask how they felt about being documented, about what it was like to find their record or that of their family? What struggles and barriers did they overcome to get access to that record?

 

 

Beyond #digitaldinosaurs

A month or so ago, the CSIRO, Australia’s federally funded science research body, released a report on the way in which GLAM (for which read, Art Galleries and Museums mostly) should engage in digitisation in order to support the NBN and avoid becoming digital dinosaurs (A recent op-ed from the UK puts the opposite position, that the viscerality of the GLAM experience will be of ongoing importance  – http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/is-there-a-future-for-the-traditional-museum-9855822.html) My assessment, on this blog, was not entirely flattering.  The report could, and should, have been so much more.

Today, I received notice of the final report from the Royal Society of Canada into Libraries and Archives Canada – The Future Now – http://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/L%26A_Report_EN_FINAL_Web.pdf . It covers the things that the CSIRO report did not, notably the roles of libraries and archives in the current and future environments. Rather than suggesting that libraries and archives must change to survive, it identifies both the things we do well now, for now and the future, and the things we need to work on.

What fascinates me about the library and archives project is that it too

has many faces and can be many things to many people. It will always

be relevant; yet it also needs to change with the times in which we live.

Our job is to prepare our institutions for the coming generations, not

with restrictive definitions and practices, to give them the tools with

which to see and learn, to ensure that the many voices, both past and

present, continue to be alive and not dead.

(Gerald McMaster, in The Future Now, p. 39)

It looks at the impact of budget and budget decline ( a not inconsiderable concern in Australia and elsewhere):

Whatever the budgetary imperatives facing LAC (and LAC still benefits

from a $90 million annual budget going forward), the fundamental statutory

objectives are not being met whether in preservation of the patrimony for future

generations or the facilitation of access to the documentary patrimony for

present-day research…

LAC needs far more support than successive governments have been prepared to show (p.42)

Convergence is also on the table, with the report noting that ‘In Australia, New Zealand, and the EU the merger of LAC is presented as an appalling model to be avoided by libraries and archives.’ (p.42). By way of contrast, the experience of the Bibliothèque etArchives nationales du Québec (BanQ) from which the new Director of LAC comes, is put forward as a positive. Harmonisation, rather than assimilation, is the watchword, and ‘absolute respect for the specific characteristics of each discipline, library and archival sciences’ (p.45).

Section D looks at the general context of archival collaboration and co-ordination. The discussion touches on, but does not explicitly mention, ‘total archives’, and also the idea of some form of federated or national collection.  The recommendations are somewhat lukewarm, and generic. Section E looks at collaboration across libraries and archives, and specifically at the way in which archives and libraries could share digital repositories or manage cloud services for institutional archives.  The discussion here seems a little at odds with the support for ‘respectful’ collaboration between the professions, and may need to be further developed. Section F looks both at digital access to collections and concerns about personal and private archives.

Section G:II (based curiously in the section on academic libraries) look at some of the issues that the CSIRO report examined, from social media to digital collections and access. Section H:II Public libraries, considers those who are not well served by the current distribution of information resources, from remote and regional communities, to individuals with functional illiteracy due to education, language, or disability, and those without access to the facilities, be they digital or phsyical.

There is a detailed discussion of Canadian copyright law and the impact that has both on collection and distribution of information materials, and on the impact of open access models.  Open data and open government are not concepts discussed in the report.

Aside from a somewhat disconcerting loss of the letters ‘fl’ in combination (re  ection, in  uence, etc), this is a thoughtful investigation into a major institution and the various organisations and professions that support and rely on it.

  Four stars from me.

‘Digital dinosaurs’: a response

The CSIRO has recently released a paper advising that the Australian GLAM sector has to become digitally innovative, or risk becoming “digital dinosaurs’ (http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Australian-museums-risk-becoming-digital-dinosaurs.aspx. Also from the project google site – https://sites.google.com/site/glaminnovationstudy/).  While I endorse the sentiment that the GLAMR sector needs to connect socially online, provide innovative digital programs,  in education, and through digital preservation and discovery, I find the report and its recommendations to be somewhat shallow, and just a tad condescending.  I recognise that the same could be said of this response, given that it has been pulled together by one person, over the course of a weekend.  I’ll also be looking at the report from a records and archives perspective, with a little bit from libraries, and my own historian’s perspective.

The report opens with a foreword from Frank Howarth, President, Museums Australia. In it he talks about his wish to find the works of Australian photographer, Frank Hurley.  Hurley is well researched, and well known, with many publications available about his work. Yet, says Howarth, ‘the capacity of the GLAM sector’ to provide immediate digital access to the complete works of and about this important figure ‘ is patchy indeed’.  The failure lies at the feet of the various collecting institutions which have, apparently, failed to maximise digital access to their collections (and to Hurley, in particular), through a lack of engagement with the relevant technology, in particular registers, catalogues and indexes.  A wider conversation across all sectors to enable greater use of digital collection systems is required.   Howarth identifies the primacy of the ‘visitor experience’ and identifies that this occurs primarily through physical access to the sites and collections. Morevover, he suggests that the distinctions between libraries, galleries, archives and museums is 19th century, and a hindrance to true exploration of the distributed national collection (which is not a phrase to be found in the report, at any stage, until towards the end, where it is treated with some suspiscion) – in other words, that convergence on-line and in the real world is both inevitable and required.

Howarth identifies that there needs to be three key actions to enable this to happen :

1) Greater cross-sectorial conversations and links;

2) A great conference, like the Digital Forum in NZ, or Museums and the Web; and,

3) ‘Equity of opportunity and access to the potential of the digital world’.

These three themes are also picked up in the executive summary.

The first and last of these points are clearly motherhood statements, which need to be teased out further. Nevertheless, the first point is clearly needed, as identified by the gaps in this report, and, for example, by the comparable and complementary work of the National and State Libraries Association  (NSLA)’s Digital preservation working group and the Council of Australasian Archives and Records Association (CAARA)’s ADRI, which appear to be working independently of each other.  With respect to the second, while the Digital Forum occurs in a foreign country, it is accessible by most Australians and institutions with the necessary budget – why reinvent the wheel; perhaps we can take it over by stealth?  But the question needs to be asked, do these conferences drive innovation, and are they the most effective way of spreading the digital message?  As for the third, well, yes, of course, but how? The Collections Council was, of course, one approach to the problem. Abruptly deprived of funding by the Labor government, overseen by Minister for Culture and the Arts, Peter Garrett, the Council provided a voice across the GLAM sector and was working towards standardisation and areas of commonality – http://arts.gov.au/collections/collections-council-of-australia.  Perhaps a time has come for its return?

The focus of the study is to look at innovation (although this is not defined, and could perhaps benefit from close attention to the US Museums Association message on the subject –  http://museumsassociation.org/video/17092014-museum-innovation) and the opportunities provided to the GLAM sector ‘created by new broadband and digital services’.  So, the links to access, via digital technology, are clearly spelled out. This is not a bad thing, but it does mean that the report may be focused on product rather than process.  There is also an expectation that convergence is inevitable, and that those opposed to it are dragging their feet through an outdated allegiance to old ideas and concepts. Despite this, the report gives a brief one paragraph summary of each sector, drawn from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008 report on the culture and leisure industries.  I am not convinced by the convergence argument, myself.  I think that the collecting institutions and the professions that work within them represent different ways of understanding and working with information. Blurring the lines between them means that we must embrace the educative and interpretive roles of the museum, plus the research functions of science and natural history museums, creating not just collecting information, while at the same time ensuring that the evidential nature of the material collected is clearly identified and expressed. The material will need to meet or address some aesthetic criteria, or present critical perspectives of past, future and contemporary issues. Taking all of this on for all institutions, and collections, may be biting off more than we can chew. I’m also concerned that the increasing post-modernisation of the products of the GLAM sector will mean loss of context and therefore meaning and understanding.  Our collections are appraised, arranged and used for different purposes. Confusing these purposes may dumb us down rather than create and build knowledge (see, for example, Raymond Schutz’s analysis of the need for context in the digitised Holocaust archives – http://www.arhivelenationale.ro/images/custom/image/serban/2013/RA%202%202010/03%20schutz,%20raymund-engleza.pdf).

The first part of the report looks at the institutional environment, including funding, collection size and access statistics. The first part looks at economic activity, and the funding and clientele for each sector.  The library sector is, unsurprisingly, by far the largest, with over 12,000 employees, more than 6,000 volunteers,  and an annual income of around $1220 million.  Museums follow with $710m and 5,000 employees  supported by the largest volunteer sector – nearly 23,000 people. Galleries receive around $470 million, with 2,500 employees and a respectable 3,700 volunteers. Archives tag along, a poor fourth, with $140 million in income and 811 employees (plus 120 volunteers).  Museums and galleries receive a significant proportion of funding from the public sector, as opposed to libraries and archives. Archives differ from the others in that they have a significant clientele among government bodies  Clearly, Howarth’s third activity and a converged environment are already facing some challenges.

The report then turns to collection statistics, including the size of collections and visits to the various institutions.

There are over 100 million objects held across Australia’s GLAM institutions. Australia’s museums and libraries hold the largest documented collections; galleries collections are far smaller. Archives are not included in these estimates as their collections are recorded in kilometres of shelf space, rather than numbers of objects.

Again, the differences appear to be more significant than might otherwise be expected.  And the exclusion of archives on the grounds that they measure things differently is really not excusable, particularly as the report identifies that

There is a hierarchy among GLAM institutions in terms of funding and status – there was discussion about different levels of interest from government, corporate and public stakeholders in the different domains within the GLAM sector – archives being the least visible.

Yes, archives are measured in shelf metres, but the main CAARA statistical reports also provide a nice calculation to turn those metres into items (or objects) – http://www.caara.org.au/index.php/archival-statistics/ – either mulitplied by 100 (NAA, revised) or by 158 (unrevised). Using the simplest calculation, the archives sector suddenly has 62.9 million objects and the library sector nearly 90 million items, of which only 7.6 million, plus 37 shelf km, or 43 million objects are retained permanently as with the other collecting bodies, with galleries possessing 2.9 million and museums, 49. 6 million.  This means that the lowest funded institutions have the majority of items.  The report then looks at the proportion of gallery and museum objects on public display, accessible online and recorded electronically, but does not do the same for libraries or archives.  While the question of ‘exhibit’ may be somewhat moot for libraries and archives (another convergence challenge), the question of accessibility online and electronic recording should be more easily determined.  Museums and galleries have 5.4% of their collections online with 46.7% recorded electronically, according to the ABS statistics cited.  I’m reasonably certain that all of the NSLA institutions have online catalogues, with the majority of works described at item level. The archival and manuscript collections within libraries may be more difficult to ascertain, but not impossible. Similarly, all the CAARA bodies (other than the ACT archives) have online catalogues and backend archive management systems, so the proportion of archives ‘electronically recorded’ at either series or item level should be fairly easy to determine, and also very high : the major archives provide a summary of the number of individual items described within the annual CAAARA report, a not inconsiderable 23 million items in 2011-2012 (approximately 30% of the archives collections. However, this does not identify the records described at the aggregate, series, level).

The question of what is accessible online is more problematic, and highlights one of the problems with the report.  Should libraries include the works digitised by Google or the Hathi Trust? If including University libraries, should the digital theses repositories be included? Does it include access to works only available digitally,  including journals and reports? Should archives include the material digitised by Ancestry, Findmypast and the like? Although the report embraces innovation and connectivity, it does not seem to recognise the now very traditional ways in which libraries and archives engage with and make material accessible over the internet (whether broadband or via dialup).

The second part of the report looks at trends and innovations: this is something of a riff on the usual suspects, and would benefit from a more engaged understanding with the sector, and deeper research.  Trends include the increasing use of digital services, and particularly social media, based on a 2012 CSIRO study on megatrends, generally; the reduction in GLAM sector funding from government; environmental factors; the ageing population and globalisation.  Social justice issues such as access to information about ourselves, from family history, to Stolen Generations, forced adoptions and Royal Commissions into institutionalised child abuse are not raised.  Given the role of archives in ensuring civic rights and individual surety of identity, this is a critical gap. Curiously, though, section 4.1.2 of the report focuses on ‘Community welfare’.

The section on innovation and best practice reviews some of the better known activities in the digital sphere but neither engages with why they were successful, or what barriers might exist that may need to be overcome. Nor is the question of resourcing addressed.  Open access to collections is identified as a factor, with the Powerhouse’s use of Flickr provided as an example. The problem with the closing of Flickr Commons for several years, limiting the ability of collecting institutions to contribute in a cost effective manner is not discussed, nor is the State Library of Queensland release of 50,000 images to the Wiki commons. TROVE, of course, is mentioned, and its antecedents with Picture Australia and successful newspapers online project are identified, but the corresponding issues of copyright clearances and orphan works are not addressed, until one gets to section 3 – the ‘elephants in the room’.  The great Atlas of Living Australia is put up as a resource for geolocation of information about biodiversity data, but the issues of historic place names, questions of ease of integration with cataloguing tools, questions of uploadable datasets and size,  and even the availability of geolocatable information is missing (nor does the report mention, at this stage, the National Map data service – http://nationalmap.nicta.com.au/). Citizen science, wikimedians in residence, third party metadata tagging and so on, all get a mention. Here the question of a cultural mindset among GLAM institutions would be a useful addition, in looking at the reasons why these apparently free and relatively simple to implement programs are so rare. The success of Google books in the US and UK is identified

Many North American and European libraries have collaborated in this initiative, however there are no Australian partners. As a result, many books about Australia and published in Australia are now only searchable in digital form from a copy held by an overseas library

In a digitally connected online environment, in which institutions are to become a melange, why is country of source an issue? Conversely, the Norwegian digitisation project is put up, but the question of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage (and the lack of funding for IATSIS and ‘language’ projects), which might benefit from improved access to culturally appropriate works is not addressed. From there we go to digital art collections, digital film and sound (Australian Sreen online and BBC creative archives, not to mention the BBC’s  digital public space), but not releases of public domain material on vimeo or youtube, to robots touring physical exhibits  and maker spaces.  Missing is a discussion about gamification, collections in Minecraft or Second Life, .scvngr, 4square or drones in the archives. Where too, are interactive videos, audio streaming, and Museum Dance Off?  The link to government initiatives at a policy level, rather than institutional level, is also missing.

Section 2.3 , ‘Relevant technology’, is more of the same.  Digitisation looks at the use of digital scanning in the digital humanities sphere, but does not look at the National Archives ongoing digitisation on demand program, and similar programs. Discovery points to the data visualisation undertaken by Mitch Whitelaw in the National Archives  as an Ian McLean researcher in 2008, but does not go further to look at how similar work has been adopted by the National Archives and Records Administration, working with the University of Texas, to work on digital archives approaches. Nor does it look at how that work is being used by researchers or the NAA itself. Common sense reasoning, analytics, and touch screens all get a look in, although the University of Sydney’s Heurist does not – http://heuristnetwork.org/background/, nor the long running Bright Sparcs project (now Encyclopaedia of Australian Science –  http://www.eoas.info/)and related programs at the University of Melbourne, or the work of IVEC in WA in supporting a range of archaeological and cultural heritage initiatives.  The role of the Australian Research Council in funding research and data use is not investigated, nor is the metadata aggregation of the Australian National Data Service or the CSIRO’s own engagement, via its library service, with managed research data repositories. While it could be said that space was an issue in the report, the same cannot be said for the number of links in the google site.

Section 3 refers to a workshop, based in Sydney, at which some of the ideas in the report were presented. Aimed at “leading edge practice in the sector’, digital technologies such as telepresence suites, virtual conferencing systems or even Skype would have provided an ideal opportunity to both walk and talk the walk and talk. During the workshop a number of ‘elephants’ – barriers to digital engagement – were identified, but few solutions seem to have been identified, other than that institutions needed to take a greater role in providing innovative solutions, to stop competing with each other and to undertake ‘mentoring’ of smaller , less able institutions. Easier said than done, especially in an environment where resourcing is clearly competitive, and the institutions themselves rely on legislation to authorise their activities.  One can be far more interpretative of legislation if one is not then also responsible for ensuring adherence to the letter and spirit of other laws.  Four key strategies were identified :

1) Making the public part of what we do – citizen archivists, tagging and collaboration (TROVE Newspapers online, the NAA arcHive, Carnamah’s Virtual Volunteers)

2) Becoming central to community well being (Find and Connect, Forced Adoptions, Founders and Survivors)

3) Beyond digitisation (GovHack? ), and

4) Developing non-government funding sources.

They also visited

several institutions that seem to house galleries, libraries, archives and museums under one roof, notably the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Australian War Memorial and the Museum of Australian Democracy…

noting that “the apparent boundaries between the four styles of institutions already seem more porous than one might think’. However, this is a common confusion over co-location, rather than convergence.  Housed in the one building, the various areas nevertheless display the common characteristics and professional concerns of the individual collection types.

Finally, the authors took these four strategies to specific discussants, and tried to identify some areas of commonality. From those discussions came 6 strategic initiatives:

1. Digitisation and access
2. Digital preservation
3. National approaches to rights
4. Skills and organisational change
5. Shared infrastructure
6. Trans-disciplinary collaboration, Digital Humanities and eResearch

Again, a very broad brush has been taken to these initiatives.  Digitisation and access looks at questions of support and shared expertise, suggesting that expertise and equipment could be shared, although how this latter could be done across the country is not worked through – does the equipment travel or the items? How would it be funded? Digital preservation noted the need for an urgent ‘coordinated, national, cross-sector approach to avoid losing access to historical digital materials’. The copyright section noted the responses to the recent Australian Law Reform Commission review, and identified the need for a ‘stronger and unified voice on rights in general’. No argument there! However,  management of orphan works, and moral rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, could be simply managed by a national, co-ordinated response.  The report again cites Tony Ageh and the BBC Digital public space, to which my response is,

It’s more complicated than you think

Tony Ageh 13 March 2014

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/tony-ageh/its-more-complicated-than-you-think.

From there we go to education, and the need for new skills and reskilling. As a person working in the education space, I can assure we are keenly aware of the need for these skills, but also that you can’t train everyone to do everything, nor should you. Nor have we forgotten that our core skills require archivists and librarians to be “client centred’ or ‘service dominant’, whether in the digital or physical environment. The report does not articulate the ways in which the GLAM sector is not client centred, which would at least provide a way forward for the proposed changes.

Shared systems and infrastructure focused on the eResearch networks,such as ANDS and AARNet. It was suggested that use of AARNet would assist with cross institutional collaboration, including storage and dissemination. Certainly, I can see benefits for cross-sectorial collaboration, including telepresence communication and the like, but I’m not sure that the various archives or libraries actually fit AARNet’s remit. Worth exploring, though.

Similarly, the suggestion that we work more across disciplines and engage with users is one which I think most institutions and professions are open to.

Finally, the report recommends a National forum, along the lines of the National Digital Forum in NZ and an Innovation and Access Foundation.  With increasing restrictions on travel and training, the AARNet supported conferencing systems may be the best way of establishing the first.  A National Foundation, established as a clearing house for private sector donations across the GLAMR world, may be one way of ensuring that archives, for instance, move from being ‘the least visible’ part of the sector.

In conclusion, then, I find the report to be somewhat long on rhetoric and short on research. There are some good suggestions within the report that need to be refined and further developed.  However, it seems clear that GLAM insititutions are already working well within the digital sphere, and are at more risk from glib dismissals and underfunding, than from a lack of engagement with digital technologies. Two and a half stars from me.

From Wikipedia to our libraries

http://trends.ifla.org/insights-document

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/09/opinion/not-dead-yet/connecting-researchers-to-new-digital-tools-not-dead-yet/#_

Resistance is futile?

With the news (archives and records  google group; archiveslive) that a review into whether the State Records South Australia and State Library of SA should be combined, questions about convergence, assimilation and collaboration are once again on the Australian archival agenda.

In her PhD thesis (http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/175518829?selectedversion=NBD50509505), Leith Robinson identified convergence as being about the physical and virtual co- location of ‘memory institutions’. She identified that physical convergence, at local government level, has some benefits for the community, although the benefits to the converged entities was somewhat more problematic.  Smaller institutions suffered from a loss of identity and funding, with simplified services and challenges to different professional approaches to collection information.  As Robinson notes, archivists have generally not been as supportive of the convergence trope as libraries, quoting past ASA President, Jackie Bettington’s, concerns about the ‘dumbing down’ of the archival profession.

In a comment on the ArchivesLive forum, James Lowry identifies the principal problem with the ‘memory institution’ ideology, in a way which reinforces Bettington’s concerns:

‘Collaboration’ allows archives and libraries to share technical expertise and infrastructure, but ‘convergence’ (mergers), especially with cultural institutions rather than accountability institutions, often damage the position of the archives and always sends the wrong message to government: that the archives are a cultural heritage institution only and not policy-makers with administratively significant work to do in supporting government efficiency and openness.

He points to the Library and Archives Canada as an example where ‘convergence’ has not been as smooth as might otherwise be suggested – http://exlibris.pbworks.com/w/page/63815458/Timeline%20on%20Library%20and%20Archives%20Canada%20Service%20Decline%20after%202004

These concerns are not new – in the 1994 Commission on Government review in Western Australia, specified matter 9 looked specifically at the question of an independent archives, as a separate entity from the State Library in which it had been based for some fifty years (http://www.slp.wa.gov.au/legislation/statutes.nsf/main_mrtitle_3172_homepage.html). In considering the matter, the Commission pointed out that:

An overwhelming majority of the submissions we received were critical of the proposed

retention of the PRO within the library structure. This was seen to detract from true

independence. Submissions came from professional associations allied with the different

aspects of record management including librarians, records managers and archivists.

Individuals, as well as academics, government agencies and others with a particular

interest in the topic, made formal submissions. A similar response was encountered at the

public hearings and seminars we conducted…

Echoing the Robinson’s findings that smaller institutions suffer when merged with the larger, the Commission found:

• the PRO will have to constantly compete with a larger agency (LISWA) and may be

marginalised and resource starved;

and, again echoing Bettington and Lowry:

• it is inappropriate to separate the operational and regulatory functions of an archives

authority because of the need to have some concentration of specialised skills;

In looking at other jurisdictions in which the Library and Archives appear to be combined, it is noted that these are shared organisationally, rather than subordinate of the one within the other.

The Tasmania Archives and Heritage Office forms part of the Tasmanian LINC service. The Archivist, who is appointed by the Minister, has sole responsibility for the archives and recordkeeping regime, and does not answer to a separate body, such as the State Records Commission. The Archives are responsible for both State and private archives, the latter being handed to the Archivist via the State Library Board.

New Zealand Archives and Libraries – are merged within the Department of Internal Affairs but are managed as independent entities within the Department.

Generally, though, archival institutions are managed as independent entities. An alternative model might be that of the National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA), which encompasses not just the archives, but also current information needs, through the Office of Public Sector Information and Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. TNA also has responsibility for private archives.

In looking at questions of convergence, perhaps we need to consider other agencies and organisations, other than ‘memory instituions’. There is no reason, for example, why a State archives could not be associated with a Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, open Government body or publisher, or the national archives with a metadata registration body (e.g. the NAA and ANDS) or similar. Perhaps, rather than resisting assimilation, we should be actively seeking alternative institutions and organisations with whom the other roles of the archives resonate.

The future of libraries (and archives?)

I currently have my students thinking about the future of the archives profession, as a way of getting them to review the course (there’s a reason why archives use Janus as a symbol). It was therefore nice to see that the Australian Library profession has been thinking about the future, too.

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The ALIA Futures report says that they will work with educators and the sector as a whole to develop greater technological awareness and abilities in the information management sector, continue to work on copyright reform and generally make libraries better for all; however, they do not address how they will work with others in the information management sector, and archives, records and manuscripts are missing from the executive summary.

“The nation’s nine collecting institutions are the National Library of Australia, the State Libraries of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, the ACT Heritage Library and the Northern Territory Library.”

While I recognise that the role of ALIA is to promote librarians, first and foremost, it is this kind of rhetoric which made archivists leave the Association in the first place, and which continues to dog discussions within the broader GLAM sector (or GLARM as ALIA would have it).

“Local history collections

can be found in public libraries, while government departments, companies, schools,

universities and other organisations have their own unique collections.”

(https://www.alia.org.au/sites/default/files/ALIA-Future-of-the-LIS-Profession-02-Collecting_0.pdf, p. 5)

Taking the broader view, the Futures report, and the policies and advocacy positions provided in the collecting institutions report, does speak to the concerns of GLAM institutions – digitisation of ‘national treasures’; the ability to collect, store, preserve and make content accessible; linked data; legal deposit and copyright reform; ‘managing volume’, by which they mean the growth in physical and digital collections and the demands this makes on purpose built storage and user generated content and value adding to collection information (‘co-creation’) are the main themes of the collecting institutions paper.

I look forward to hearing from ALIA in my educator’s hat (and Presidential robes) and hope to hear more about conversations with the G [L]ARM institutions in due course.  I may even have to rejoin!