Archives 2.0, the Archives Hub and AIM25

Innovative ways, sustainable means The Archives Hub and AIM25 Jane Stevenson and Geoff Browell

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

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]

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)

The Archives 2.0 Manifesto
Positive
Active
Responsive
Open
Interactive
Experimental
User-focused
Participatory
http://www.archivesnext.com

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.

Implementation
How to move forward in a sustainable way?
What underlies an effective Archives 2.0 approach?

Underlying principles of the Hub
Data – standards, quality
Software – open source
System – interoperable, distributed
Development – user-focused, innovative

Data
EAD – Encoded Archival Description
ISAD(G)
Indexing standards
Manual data editing
Validation through Template for data creation and editing
Training and raising awareness

Software
Cheshire 3 and Cheshire for Archives
Open source
Flexible
In-house development

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?

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

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.

Development
Steering Committee
Contributors’ Forum
Contributors’ Community
Blog, newsletters, email lists
National Archives Network

National Archive Network

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

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

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?’)

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

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

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?

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’

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?

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

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

Contact details
Jane Stevenson: [email_address]
Geoff Browell: [email_address]
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

Archives 2.0, the Archives Hub and AIM25

by Jane Stevenson on Mar 18, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 7

Statistics

Archives 2.0, the Archives Hub and AIM25 Presentation Transcript