Continuum informatics encompasses the theoretical models and principles that foster an understanding of interactions in the creation and management of recorded information, with a focus on cultural heritage. The research emphasizes the role of social media as a platform for memory-making and the participatory nature of archival practices, addressing the diverse needs of communities. Additionally, it seeks to explore the ethical implications and challenges in web archiving, advocating for renewed community engagement strategies.

1. Continuum informatics is a term used to describe the body of
knowledge, including the array of theoretical models, that
promotes a multi-dimensional understanding of the
transformative interactions involved in creating, capturing,
organizing and pluralizing recorded information over time and
throughout different spaces (spacetime).
This body of knowledge provides a comprehensive series
of principles, concepts and theory that help to inform
continuum informatics and can be applied to explore the
meaning and processes involved in cultural heritage
formation. In cultural heritage the principles and concepts
applied include evidence, recordkeeping, multiplicity,
plurality, and memory.
There is a critical and growing need to understand and embrace the
complex memory and archival needs of an expanding,
technologically savvy and actively participative society.
The need for memory-making and heritage is as diverse as the people and
communities creating the stories. Memory-making plays a significant role in
the identification of social and cultural standards, as well as values and factors
that influence recordkeeping across multiple plural (and contested) memory
spaces including personal, community, collective and networked memories.
In my research I saw that YouTube was an enabler, facilitator and platform of
personal curation, mediation and memory-making, hence providing a space
for recordkeeping that supports the ongoing use of records through
spacetime - an emergent archive
The Mediated Recordkeeping model (Figure 1) represents a framework to
support the emergent archive to facilitate, enable and engage memory-
making, rather than focus on selection, collection, and protection of cultural
heritage within the bounds and custody of the institution.©"Leisa"Gibbons"2015"
Figure 1
Leisa Gibbons PhD. Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science
Social media
archives vs.
web archives Storifying &
curating big
data
Capturing
donated
personal
profiles
Representing social
movements &
marginalized
communities
Documentation
strategies as
constructed
archive
Ethics,
consent &
evidence
Social media
archives as
evidence of
research
Record-
keeping
metadata
Web archiving practices were developed 20 years ago and has evolved into a major field of practice with leading work
being done in national libraries and in independent organizations, including the Internet Archive, and the
International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC). Web archiving raises several major and complex challenges for
collecting archives, including how to conceptualize web contents and formats, how to preserve content and make it
accessible in a meaningful way, and how to design and deliver policy and processes to identify and support the
creation, selection and management of a cultural heritage archive (Niu, 2012; Toyoda & Kitsuregawa, 2012).
Conversations from web archive scholars over the last 5-10 years also highlight the problems with collecting content
over context and the ethical dimensions of web archives (Phillips & Koerbin, 2006; Rauber, Kaiser, & Wachter, 2008;
Wu & Heok, 2007). Further conversations in relation to community engagement and participatory archives also form
part of a critical conversation about how to create and nurture digital archives that include web content is also
relevant to this research project (Eveleigh, 2012; Gilliland & McKemmish, 2014; Labrador & Chilton, 2009).
This research explores personal memory-making practices and systems of individuals who use various social media and
other technologies to explore distributed identity, and links between personal, community, identity and technology.
This research serves to extend work done by the British Library and others on exploring the digital “upgrades” of
manuscript collection traditions and the use of personal digital recordkeeping systems used as tools for curation by
visitors (John, Rowlands, Williams, & Dean, 2010; Lee, 2011; Sinn & Syn, 2014).
Additionally, there are emerging conversations concerning preservation of whole social media platforms (Marshall &
Shipman, 2014), the value of co-curation to deliver libraries of the future (Wang, 2013).
This research explores community recordkeeping in social media and asks if this work contributes to memory-making
and how it is achieved. The purpose of this project is to explore memory-making in action and ask communities how
they value their records outside of traditional group records such as meeting minutes. This project an opportunity to
identify technologies that can help to support memory-making as it evolves. Additionally, this project will examine
institutional frameworks related to community engagement in this space, and will provide an opportunity to propose
potential solutions to review and renew existing and potential community engagement processes.
Eveleigh, A. (2012). Welcoming the world: an exploration of participatory archives. In Int.
Council on Archives (ICA) Conference (ICA 2012). Retrieved from
http://www.gosbook.ru/system/files/documents/2012/11/13/ica12Final00128.pdf
Gilliland, A. J., & McKemmish, S. (2014). The role of participatory archives in furthering human
rights, reconciliation and recovery. Atlanti: Review for Modern Archival Theory and
Practice,24. Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/346521tf.pdf
John, J. L., Rowlands, I., Williams, P., & Dean, K. (2010). Digital Lives: personal digital archives for
the 21st Century (Research Paper No. 0.1A) (p. 233). London, UK: British Library. Retrieved
from http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/files/digital-lives-synthesis01a.pdf
Labrador, A. M., & Chilton, E. S. (2009). Re-locating meaning in heritage archives: a call for
participatory heritage databases. Computer Applications to Archaeology 2009 Proceedings.
Retrieved from http://works.bepress.com/angela_labrador/5/
Lee, C. A. (2011). I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era. Society of American Archivists.
Marshall, C. C., & Shipman, F. M. (2014). An argument for archiving Facebook as a
heterogeneous personal store. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on
Digital Libraries (pp. 11–20). IEEE Press. Retrieved from
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2740772
Niu, J. (2012). An Overview of Web Archiving. D-Lib Magazine, 18(3/4).
http://doi.org/10.1045/march2012-niu1
Phillips, M., & Koerbin, P. (2006). PANDORA, Australia’s web archive: how much metadata is
enough? Journal of Internet Cataloging, 7(2), 19–33.
Rauber, A., Kaiser, M., & Wachter, B. (2008). Ethical Issues in Web Archive Creation and Usage-
Towards a Research Agenda. In 8th International Web Archiving Workshop (IWAW08).
Sinn, D., & Syn, S. Y. (2014). Personal documentation on a social network site: Facebook, a
collection of moments from your life? Archival Science, 14(2), 95–124.
Toyoda, M., & Kitsuregawa, M. (2012). The History of Web Archiving. Proceedings of the IEEE,
100 (Special Centennial Issue), 1441–1443. http://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2012.2189920
Wang, Z. J. (2013). Co-Curation: New Strategies, Roles, Services, and Opportunities for Libraries
in the Post-Web Era and the Digital Media Context. Libri, 63(2), 71–86.
Wu, P. H. J., & Heok, A. K. H. (2007). Is web archives a misnomer - how web archives can become
digital archives? In C. Khoo, D. Singh, & A. S. Chaundry (Eds.), Asia-Pacific Conference on
Library and Information Education and Practice 2006 (pp. 298–305). School of
Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University