Challenges, Choices, Collaboration
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The document discusses the challenges and choices in digital archiving, emphasizing the need for collaboration among researchers, institutions, and the public. It highlights the role of digital humanities in enhancing user engagement through projects like the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure and citizen archivist initiatives. Ultimately, it advocates for community participation in archival work to enrich and digitize resources effectively.
Challenges, Choices, Collaboration
- 1. Challenges, Choices, Collaboration Sheila Anderson Professor of e-Research Centre for e-Research Department of Digital Humanities King’s College London
- 2. Challenges • On the one hand: – ‘The new professional frontier’: Digital records, standards and encoding – Increasing volume of material • On the other: – Expectation that all finding aids will be comprehensive, digital, and available on-line – Pressure to digitise existing holdings – To connect holdings across institutions using the semantic web and linked data
- 3. Choices: collaboration • Collaboration – but how and with whom? • Motivations, barriers, and tasks • The Academy: – Digital Humanities – Digital research infrastructures – Researchers as contributors to archive work • The Public: – Social / community engagement – Crowd-sourcing – ‘Citizen (science) Archivist’
- 4. Digital Humanities • Fast growing discipline – significant investment across Europe • Collaborative projects to digitise, enrich, and link archival sources • Provides an enhanced experience for users including the general public • Also serves the research community • Projects can have significant impact and raise awareness of the value of holdings
- 7. Digital Research Infrastructures • European Holocaust Research Infrastructure project (EHRI) • Collaborative European Digital Archive Research Infrastructure (CENDARI) • “Ecosystem” of shared collaboration on a large scale with archives, libraries, domain researchers, and information and computer scientists • Achieving core tasks plus new development • See also the session with Petra Links and Ivo Zandhuis for more on EHRI
- 10. Researcher engagement • Researchers undertaking archival work can get to know the archives well • Capturing the process of archival researcher - notes, annotations, links and connections • Blouin and Rosenberg ‘parallel but linked’ information attached to finding aids?
- 11. Case Study: Mary Shannon Mary’s research focuses on a street in Victorian London, Wellington Street, between 1843-53. This street leads off the Strand, and during this period it contained, among others, the offices of Charles Dickens, of his largely-forgotten competitor G.W.M. Reynolds, of national newspapers and of the Lyceum Theatre. Her work is a detailed study of the way this street was a highly significant location for a wide range of activities to do with print culture, and a hub of relationships, influences and connections between writers, booksellers, newspaper editors, printers, theatre managers and spectators, and ultimately readers. The thesis uses archival research, literary criticism, and literary geography to explore Wellington Street at different times of the day and to examine the intersection between print culture, popular culture, the built environment and urban experience.
- 12. Social / Community engagement • Offering the opportunity to contribute to users – based on reciprocity and ‘giving something back’ • User generated content in the process of using the archive • Genealogists for example might be willing to add to finding aids, or tag material used • Local historians might write and contribute a small research guide • Scan and contribute transcribed holdings back to the archive • Most likely to a one-off contribution framed around the users interests
- 13. Crowd-sourcing • Trevor Owens: ‘inviting participation from interested and engaged members of the public’ • Using social engagement techniques to achieve a shared goal • Usually around a specific collection of materials and for a finite period • A ‘call for contributors’ but largely self selecting • Variable contributions in both length and depth
- 16. Citizen Science • Citizen science: a form of research collaboration involving members of the public in scientific research projects to address real-world problems • Identification with the science and the overall goals and requirements of the research • Tightly directed to undertake clearly defined tasks under the supervision of a scientist • Contribute to tightly defined and usually moderated tasks • Build a community to achieve a goal through contributing to a defined set of tasks • Requires greater input from the sponsoring organisation
- 19. Citizen Archivist? • Adapted from citizen science: a form of collaboration involving members of the public in archival work to address real-world problems • Identification with the Archive as an institution and the overall goals and requirements of the archive • Tightly directed to undertake clearly defined tasks under the supervision of an archivist • Contribute to a project to digitise holdings or to catalogue items in a series • Build a community to achieve a goal through contributing to a defined set of tasks • Requires greater input from the sponsoring organisation
- 20. Thank you and questions sheila.anderson@kcl.ac.uk