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The “background” section for the presentation I will be giving Friday at the Northwestern Ontario Archivists’ Association symposium “History in a Digital World.”

Some of this is lifted directly from a short paper I wrote on the same general subject last year. Really, it’s stuff I’ve been paying attention to and thinking about for ages.

Other contents: “Who are your online users?”, “Case studies” where I get to talk with and about some really interesting people, and “Presentation and authenticity in online exhibits” which gets into the “what should archives actually be doing” realm.

This is all a work in progress, so comments, criticisms, and the like are very, very welcome.

When you combine the exponential increase in internet use with the general rise of interest in history and heritage over the past few decades, it makes sense that people are more and more heavily using the internet to access historical material.

This has put cultural heritage institutions in a rush to get all the good, solid information online as quickly as possible. There is a stark awareness that the public’s understanding of history is dependent on the segments of the documentary record that are available: if it can’t be read, it can’t be known about. In recent years, this has roughly translated to “if it isn’t online, it doesn’t exist.”

So we digitize collections and we build web exhibits. This sort of public work has definite benefits – not only does our public have better access to heritage materials online, but we are able to increase general awareness of our holdings and our role in the community. The archives or the museum is no longer just a building. 

The purpose of putting cultural heritage material online need not be to create a formal educational experience. Most people, when visiting a museum, tend to explore the exhibits casually, and socially, rather than looking at every single artifact and reading every single piece of text in the order it was intended by the exhibit designer.

This sort of social browsing behaviour isn’t seen in archives, because they aren’t set up to allow it. We are used to people visiting with particular research questions in mind, and we find for them records that will be relevant to those questions.

But both of these behaviours can be supported simultaneously on the web.

If it were as easy to visit museums, archives, and libraries around the world in person, at any time, then we’d be used to the sort of user context we are now facing. As it stands, there have been major opportunities in how we reach and connect with the public since the rise of, and now ubiquity of, the web from the 1990s on.

This means connecting with new user groups, allowing people to browse and interact with archival material in casual or fun ways, and encouraging them to share their own interpretations and presentations of cultural heritage material.

Let’s take care of some definitions and language.

Definition: “cultural heritage material”

This is a phrase I really like, and will be using throughout this presentation, to refer to things like archival records, museum objects, books, recordings … basically anything that might make up content in an exhibit. I think it’s useful not to cling too much to the differences between different types of institutions when we’re talking about user experience, and particularly when we’re talking about user experience on the web.

Social networking versus social media:

Social networking sites are about individual people, creating a personal online identity: things like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace. Social media is about sharing activities, photographs and other media. “Social” because they are used to make connections with people who share those interests. But it’s about the media rather than individual identity. Examples: flickr, YouTube.

Presence for marketing versus presence for contribution:

There’s a big definition between using social media or social networking sites for marketing, and using them to share content.

There are loads of great examples of archives, museums, and libraries using sites like Facebook or Twitter to raise awareness of their own activities. You can share information about the institution, solicit feedback, let people know about events or activities.

But keep in mind when we’re talking about institutional presence on social media that there’s a big difference between this sort of thing and institutions participating on sites like flickr or YouTube, where they would be sharing their content using exactly the same platform open to anyone else, and opening up that content to reuse and reinterpretation.

I won’t be talking at all today really about the marketing uses. There’s loads of literature available on that subject if you’re interested.  

Definition: “online curation”

I will be using the term “online curation” to refer to the act of setting up a web exhibit or web collection of cultural heritage material. In the most general term this involves collecting (bringing things together for a particular effect), presenting things in a particular order or grouping, and providing some degree of background or contextual material.

Kevin Kelly has written about the Rosetta Disk — a Long Now project that has microscopically etched text in over a thousand languages onto a nickel disk, encased in a glass sphere. The intent is that it will physically last as long as possible, and also increase the likelihood of readability well into the future. (The disk is analogue rather than digital, and the microscopic nature is implied by text decreasing in size on the opposite side.) Provided that at least one of the existing human languages is still known, the disk should enable future scholars to read the others, as it reproduces several standard texts translated into the variety of languages.

(It’s not explicitly stated, but what might be the probability of a civilization with no prior knowledge of any of the languages being able to decode it, to some extent at least?)

Saving one disk for all time is pretty unlikely. The goal is to produce a sufficient number of these, and have them stored in enough different locations that one or two can be expected to survive. Total cost (as quoted by Kelly) is $25 000. Seems like a lot, if you’re considering buying one for yourself.

But compared to the sort of money that large organizations deal with, it’s hardly anything. Get enough people together, and it would be easy to buy as a group. I’m sure that any number of university libraries, national libraries and archives, and similarly large institutions will be able to pick one or two up without blinking.

And if I can find 99 other people to put $250 in, then no problem!

Sending stuff into space is cool, no argument. Selecting bits and pieces of human culture to share with the rest of the universe is also cool.

It would be nice if it were done in a way that was actually functional.

The Planetary Society has sent a DVD along with the spacecraft Phoenix, landing on the surface of Mars today. This disc contains text, artwork, audio, and video recordings, carefully curated, reflecting human perspectives of Mars.

“After landing, the spacecraft’s scientific instruments will come alive, and begin their search for water ice in the harsh Martian environment. Nestled among busy instruments, a small and very special DVD will wait patiently for its turn. This unique DVD is made of silica glass, and designed to last hundreds if not thousands of years into the future, when its true mission will commence. It carries nothing less than a message from our world to one centuries away, when humans will roam the Red Planet.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

I know I’m not the first to mention this, but even considering that the physical DVD may last for a very, very long time, the chances that anyone (human, posthuman, or whatnot) will be able to read the information are very slight.

In my ten minutes or so of research, I wasn’t able to find out any information about file formats or anything more technical than “it’s a special DVD.” Perhaps I’m reading the situation wrong.

At the very least, the disc itself will be an interesting artefact — a memorial to our very high hopes for posterity.