Innovative ways, sustainable means

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Innovative ways, sustainable means

• The Archives Hub and AIM25

Jane Stevenson and Geoff Browell
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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 Womens 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 dont 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
  (isnt 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 (youre 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 (cant 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?
• Cant 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, Cant 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? (Cant
  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 jane.stevenson_at_manchester.ac.uk
• Geoff Browell geoffrey.browell_at_kcl.ac.uk
• 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 twitter
• http//twitter.com/archiveshub