This document summarizes a seminar presentation about the challenges and benefits of digitizing archival records from a professional association. Key points include: the project aims to develop guidelines for digitizing the records of CPA Australia to improve access; the records document the social history of the accounting profession; challenges include managing file sizes, securing dedicated staff, and addressing intellectual property issues; benefits include remote access, new analytical methods, and connecting dispersed records.

1. SEMINAR: Managing digitisation for societies, researchers, and institutions
State Library User Organisation Council, 10th May 2014
Digitising archival records of a professional
association: benefits and challenges
Steven Chang
Former research assistant at the University of Melbourne
Medical Librarian at Western Health Library Services

2. What I’ll be speaking about…
✤ The project: why, how, and who...?
✤ The records: what’s being digitised?
✤ The challenges and lessons

3. The Project
✤ ARC-funded Linkage Grant
✤ CPA Australia
✤ Project partners: Australian National University,
Ballarat & Deakin Universities, University of
Melbourne, National Archives of Australia

4. The Project (Aims)
✤ Develop a system for appraising, digitising, and
improving archival access to CPA Australia’s
collections
✤ Develop guidelines and tools for future digitisation
projects
✤ Create framework for a national business archive

5. The records - CPA Australia archives
✤ One of the oldest professional accounting associations
in the world
✤ Significance: it highlights the social history and trends
in the historical development of the discipline
✤ Broad applicability, social custodian of the accounting
profession’s collective memory

6. Which file format?
✤ Industry standards
✤ Why 300 DPI resolution? Preserves detail, colour,
complexities – but file sizes within reasonable limits
✤ Preservation files (TIFF) vs working copies (PDF /
JPEG)

7. Appraisal
✤ Itemised appraisal = granularity down to item level
✤ Results in increased findability
✤ Enables initiatives such as “series” based classification
and unique subject headings
✤ Enriches possibilities for integration of metadata

8. Retention & Disposal Authority
✤ Which records do we digitise?
✤ Selection matrix tool - criteria for selecting records for
digitisation
✤ Adapt these tools to the situation
✤ Be mindful of users and usability! Consider
accompanying documentation, notes, or glossary

9. Case study - historical exam analysis
✤ Objective: Mapping pedagogical trends in accounting
from the 1900s to 1950s
✤ Demonstrated the power of remote access to online
archival collections

10. Case study - Dead Sea Scrolls
✤ Ten Commandments, book of Genesis, oldest copies of the
Hebrew Bible
✤ Access on a new scale – discoverable by web search for
researchers all around the world
✤ Infra-red/multi-spectral imaging enables hidden words to be
viewed, not typically visible in natural light
✤ Google Cultural Institute: Digitizing the Biblical Manuscripts
http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/deadseascroll/

11. Case study - topic modeling
✤ Mapping colonial attitudes towards American-Indians
via digitisation of 18-19th century newspapers
✤ Digital archives enable not just increased access, but
entirely new methods of analysis
✤ Tracking relationship between gender and race in
colonial society over time
✤ Sharon, B. "Doing More with Digitization: An introduction to topic modeling
of early American sources." Common-Place 6(2). http://www.common-
place.org/vol-06/no-02/tales/

12. Challenges - digital storage
✤ You WILL run out of space if you do not PREPARE
your digital repository rigorously
✤ How large are your files?
✤ What is the scope of the project?
✤ KNOW these answers. Plan and calculate accordingly.

13. Challenges - staffing
✤ Avoid perils of ad-hoc staffing resources & scheduling
✤ Important to secure dedicated staffing resources
✤ Communicate and plan with relevant stakeholders
about how you will make this happen

14. Challenges - technology
✤ Who can solve these problems promptly? Be prepared
to dedicate resources to troubleshooting!
✤ We live in a world of continuous digital revolution
✤ So how do we “Future Proof” access to material?
(Maybe we can’t. Are we asking the right question?)
✤ “Anti-fragile” environments – benefiting from
technological instability and uncertainty (Nassim
Nicholas Taleb)
http://www.hughrundle.net/tag/antifragility/

15. Challenges - Intellectual Property,
copyright, and legal issues
✤ Copyright and IP issues are one of the most potentially
deadly threats to digitisation projects
✤ Can wreck projects, cost months/years of progress
✤ Communicate with stakeholders, find ways around the
issue
✤ Take away lesson: consult experts, anticipate where
copyright issues will spring up

16. Where to from here?
✤ Project being expanded on, into a federated
national/international framework
✤ Unite disparate records
✤ Digitally fuse together physically isolated records
✤ Enrich human narratives and story-telling

17. Resources and references
✤ VALA14 conference session on the project
http://www.vala.org.au/vala2014-
proceedings/vala2014-session-1-ludekens
✤ VIDEO: Kerrie Ludeken’s VALA14 conference talk
✤ Kerrie Ludeken’s VALA14 paper [PDF]
✤ Australian Copyright Council: www.copyright.org.au

18. Resources and references
✤ CiteULike: my collection of scholarly literature on digitisation
(total of 260 citations of journal articles):
http://www.citeulike.org/user/Infoseer
✤ Digitisation project website: Centre for Accounting & Industry
Partnerships (UNDER CONSTRUCTION 18/05/14)
http://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/accounting/caip
✤ Bettington, Jackie, 1968- and Australian Society of Archivists
(2008). Keeping Archives (3rd ed). Australian Society of
Archivists Inc, Dickson, A.C.T.

19. Resources and references
✤ Chang, S., Keneley, M., Potter, B. and West, B. (2014),
Digitising Archival Records: Benefits and Challenges for a
Large Accounting Association [to be published mid-2014]
✤ Cobbin, P., Dean, G., Esslemont, C., Ferguson, P.,
Keneley, M., Potter, B. and West, B. (2013), Enhancing
the Accessibility of Accounting and Business Archives:
The Role of Technology in Informing Research in
Accounting and Business. Abacus, 49: 396–422. doi:
10.1111/abac.12009

20. Resources and references
✤ Google Cultural Instititute: Digitizing the Biblical
Manuscripts
http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/deadsea
scroll/
✤ Sharon, B. "Doing More with Digitization: An
introduction to topic modeling of early American
sources." Common-Place 6(2). http://www.common-
place.org/vol-06/no-02/tales/

21. Steven Chang
Email: stevenpeterchang@gmail.com
LinkedIn: au.linkedin.com/in/stevenchang1/
Twitter: @InfoSeer -> www.twitter.com/Infoseer
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/StevenPChang
CiteULike: http://www.citeulike.org/user/Infoseer

22. Image attribution
✤ [Creative Commons] Interlock MCLS Digitization Tour
by bert_m_b (contact)
✤ [Creative Commons] Digitization of an unpublished
manuscript of a participant of Napoleon’s invasion of
Russia at the Centre for Retrospective Digitization,
Göttingen, Germany by Frank Schulenburg