Digital convergence
@ the
Australian War Memorial
Keynote for ALIA,
Information Online
20 January 2009

Me
Facebook: Mal Booth
del.icio.us: malbooth
Blog: frommelbin.blogspot.com
Email: mal.booth@gmail.com
Flickr: malbooth
(Sorry, but I am going to be provocative.)
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It is my ongoing belief
that our users will
soon get bored with
conversations and
catalogue records.
They want the stuff.
They expect it to be
online.
Now.
And preferably for
free.
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Why and what we digitise
WHY: WHAT:
Increase & broaden Popular collections
access (remote & Fragile & unique
24/7) material
Fragile, valuable &/ at-risk collections
or unique materials
significant
To Support research, priorities
education, exhibition
what we have the
future use or re-use right to digitise
Promotion of collections related
collections to collaborative
Relationships relationships
Preservation of at-
risk collections
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Unit War Diaries -
1,549,781 pp
Rolls & lists - 20,857
Other records - 508,846
Records scanned on
demand - 340,946 pp
Photos, art & relics -
c300,000
Sound - 1,707 titles or
2,046 hours
Digitisation
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Enterprise Content Management:
management, search & web facilities for
digital assets and services
• Extensive digital asset management features
• Excellent electronic document & record
management
Intuitive web content management features
•
Facilitate simple and complex workflow
•
processes
Extensive & Federated searching constructs
•
Scaleable
•
Compliant with all government recordkeeping
•
requirements & emerging digital preservation
standards
Integrate easily with existing systems
•
Simple to administer in terms of security,
•
auditing & storage management
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Social media and the Memorial
A major priority for the Memorial for 2008-2011 is to:
Enhance online access through use of emerging web
technologies and improved web content.
Each section had the following statement in its
business plan for 2008-2009:
Appropriate team members identified and actively
engaged in the development of the Memorial's website
and in opportunities for collaboration and community
engagement, including Web 2.0 activities such as
blogs, wikis, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube...
implemented as appropriate.
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The Digital Domain
I believe that the digital domain is an
extra dimension that should be fully
integrated to our work. It is our
responsibility to be there.
It should not be seen as the exclusive
domain of strange-looking people who
live only in Second Life and spend too
much time Twittering about rubbish.
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Our digital footprint
commons
learning promotion
Pre-publishing
subs & podcasts
mobile
learning &
platforms
networking “muddy
social-networking
footprints?”
Collaboration Community
multi-media engagement
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Librarianship in the
Digital Age?
From This To This?
Collect Develop
Organise Organise
Archive Manage
Disseminate
Disseminate
Imagine &
Create
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A Stream of Digital Consciousness
We need clever imaginative risk-taking
people who don’t know the rules
Copyright: the tail that wags the dog?
Don’t over-analyse
Don’t obsess about metadata
Learn by doing (forget doing a course)
Do it yourself or build lasting
partnerships
Managers: get involved & compromise
Don’t try to replicate analogue processes
Don’t put revenue generation up front
play with Flickr, Flickr Uploadr & iTunes
Is what we do really that hard?
Position yourself to be an innovator
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Seen recently on Facebook
Someone else: So many research methods to choose
from so little time. Can I just go back to worrying about
which metadata standard I was going to use?
Perian: why don't you research the process of metadata
selection... *runs*
Someone else: actually that's not far off the mark - but
the question is *how* to do it.
Perian: get a committee. Talk about it for 10+ years.
Publish. Watch a lot of people adopt it initially, then
have it get dumped like a bad date. Listen to the
howling and confusion that follows for the following 10
years. Rinse and repeat.
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How we are doing it
VALA, Info Online, Brooklyn Museum
By experimenting & playing!
Reading blogs, D-Lib, First Monday, etc.
Some really good people & a cunning plan
(not an MBA in sight)
picking a few “winners” & leading by example
Allowing people to create, engage &
contribute
learning continually through participation
By understanding re-use and re-purposing
compromise (the 80:20 rule)‫‏‬
Not leaving ICT (just) to IT-staff
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start now!
it is sometimes
easier to seek
forgiveness
than gain
permission
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