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I got to attend ACA 2010 in Halifax last week. I’ve for years strongly believed ACA to be the best conference ever, and I was not disappointed. It’s got a perfect combination of sessions, workshops, and social events both scheduled and casual. I was in good company last week.

Session summaries will be showing up on this site over the next little while.

As part of the Outreach Committee, I was involved in the ACA 35th Anniversary Oral History project — which meant that I spent most of the refreshment breaks and several session periods out on the balcony, talking with some of the people who have made archives in Canada what they are. (Missed some sessions, sure, but probably learned far more than I would have otherwise.)

This was my third ACA, but the first I attended as a fully-graduated, working professional. The first (2006) I was a student, the second (2007) I was months out of school, working a tenuous contract barely related to my skill set. So the thing at the back of my brain ~constantly~ was: will I be getting a job out of this?

(Answer: no, but not for lack of trying.)

So it was much, much better to be there as a normal, working delegate, to approach strangers are a colleague rather than as a supplicant, to be able to relax and hang out with the people I wanted to be with rather than worrying about where I should be at any given time.

A great conference, and once again demonstrated that I get more out of things when I stop trying so hard and just enjoy the experience.

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.

For 3.30 on Thursday I attended the session entitled “How do members of society view access and privacy issues.”

First, Johanna Smith on access to the 2006 Census:

~ The census resistance movement is more prevalent in the United States, as the census is seen as a symbol of government control. Resistance also comes from a fear of function creep: that the census will be in future used for other purposes (including historical research!)

~ The 2006 Census was sent out with a release consent question. However, it’s not clear how informed this consent actually is — the issues can’t be fully explained in the paragraph or so explaining the question.

~ 56% of people agreed to the census information release; this appears to be geographically consistent, and beyond that it’s hard to tell if it’s a representative sample or not.

~ What’s really needed is education on the subject, so that people can make informed decisions. However, the current education has been directed towards making a particular decision, which might force their opinions. And it represents archives as primarily a privacy concern, without reflecting other important aspects.

~ Also as people’s perceptions of privacy and archival issues change with time, this will change the proportions or subset of whose records are preserved, affecting the record.

~ These issues will be reviewed again in 2016, so we have until then to figure out how to approache the problem.

Next, Michael Moir on “Impact of Access Restrictions on Use of Private Papers.”

~ He described a case where a researcher was using the records of a still-living subject with her complete permission. The subject was not particularly concerned with her own privacy. Upon her death, the remaining set of materials became inacessible due to the ownership not being transferred.

~ Very important to a university to have its collections accessible (clearly) as that’s their purpose in collecting.

~ Donors have incentive to donate for posterity, and for the tax receipt.

~ Privacy is important; it becomes the responsibility of the archivist to control access and even act as a censor at times.

~ The practice of collecting papers is changing. More and more often archivists are acquiring the papers of those who are still living. Archives no longer deal with only the long-dead.

~ Researchers are more and more interested in sensitive documents, as it becomes important for biographies to “tell all.”

~ Another challenge is that of third parties mentioned in archival documents. This has always happened, but with increased online access to finding aids, it is being noticed at a much greater rate.

~ Important for donors to gain a better understanding of the nature of their donation to prevent future problems.

Commentary, by Ian Forsyth:

~ For the census, this is an issue of trust: important for Statistics Canada to be seen as a trusted institution. The only way to do this is to be seen as acting impartially.

~ This problem is not restricted to the census: applies to many other sources of vital statistics. However, most other documents like this don’t require informed consent; why the census?

~ It was once common for archivists to accept any and all donor requests. This needs to change. A balance must be struck between the rights and needs of three groups: donors, researchers, and third parties who are affected.

~ Do involved persons trust the institutions to whom their information is entrusted? In most cases, there is a lack of confidence.

Questions (partial list, names not recorded):

~ Commercial rights for still-living donors? The papers are often a significant monetary asset. Intellectual property rights always stay with the donor; copyright is given to archives. This strategy is less practical when there is a literary or artistic work involved.

~ Obligation to inform people of issues regarding census consent? Yes, thre is an obligation. Unfortunately, we are living in a culture of secrecy, where people are afraid of who may be reading their data.

Reactions:

I was a bit disappointed that the third speaker was unable to make it. This would have been concerning FOI. However, there will be a report released on the subject later in the year.

I have recently worked with materials donated by a still-living donor, and yes, that can confuse the situation. In our case, it was problems to do with appraisal and our need to dispose of much of the donated material as being archivally irrelevant. (Very, very irrelevant. There were kitchen utensils.) I can only imagine that copyright and privacy, being much touchier subjects, would cause even more challenges.

“Leveraging the power of the past” this session was entitled, and promised to describe how to use archival collections and services to directly (and obviously) benefit their holding institutions — basically, how to prove that the archives are worthwhile.

First, Jim Burant spoke about LAC:

~ has a multiplicity of stakeholders: primarily the Government of Canada itself

~ Archives had a mandate as a museum until 1966, as library until 1953. When those roles were eliminated, it began taking a more important role in managing government records, including microfilming.

~ because there are so many different stakeholders (gov’t, citizens, various other groups) there’s a challenge in trying to serve many different people with different needs simultaneously.

~ thus, a concentration on website, education. Events and anniversaries are targeted.

Jean Elliott from J.P. Morgan Chase archives:

~ small archives has survived through a large number of mergers and other changes in administrative structure

~ self-marketing and education is a constant process, taking up much of the time.

~ in industry, the most important benchmark is customer service: by allowing the corporation to improve its customer service using archival material, the archives can conclusively justify their existence.

~ important to describe services rather than resources: while the instinct may be to talk about extent of holdings, and that other stuff that tends to be exciting for archivists, it won’t have nearly as great an impact as addressing what the archives can actually do.

~ this organization has put a lot of work into exhibits, brochures, and the like which can be shown off to clients.

~ important to keep records of all this sort of work, so it can be used as a portfolio later. Take photos of exhibits, etc.

~ this institution also had success with creating replicas of artefacts to be given as gifts, reproducing photographs as note cards, and giving interviews in the media.

Questions (most of which were specific):

How to deal with marketing, etc, when you’ve got little training or specialization in it?

~ Important to build teams, reach out to allies, take responsibility.

How to balance self-marketing with actual archival work?

~ In this case, a high priority is given to marketing. Though depends on the situation.

How are reproductions/exhibits/displays paid for?

~ In this case, paid for by the department that benefits from them.

Reactions:

I found the second presentation to be fascinating in terms of remarkable successes. However, I’m not sure how many of the projects discussed would be applicable in other situations, such as a non-profit organization like the one I work for currently.

The notion of selling the benefits of an archives programme, though, seems to be fairly widely applicable. I’ve already had some experience with this: by doing something as simple as sorting the big box o’ photographs by approximate decade, I was able to give a reasonable degree of access to the advancement office, which made them very happy. Anything that has an immediate, obvious benefit to stakeholders is immediately a good thing.

I’m certainly thinking long and hard about how to apply this to my current situation. Most of what I’m working on right now is supposed to have an immediate, apparent benefit — though I’m encountering resistance from the most unexpected corners.

“Accessing Archival Information in the 2.0 Digital Age”

The title they gave to the presentation was “Collective Collection: discovery and delivery in a collaborative context.”

Brian Bell, Loren Fantin speaking on the services Alouette Canada and OurOntario.ca.

These systems they refer to as discovery systems, useful primarily to help the end user discover new materials through browsing and casual searching, rather than being dedicated to the purposes of archivists themselves or experienced researchers.

They spoke on:

~ A shift of environment or context between 1998 and today, resulting in a much more digital world. These systems are a response to the new environment.

~ Referred to the sector as GLAM, or Galleries-Libraries-Archives-Museums. (I think I like “GLAM”; hope it sticks.)

~ As the networked environment becomes much more important, the “user” becomes a combination of “consumer” and “creator.”

~ Able to use new digital technologies to study the way searches are performed and the success of their results, which allows for the continual improvement of the way searching is done.

~ The definition they give of the ubiquitous “2.0″ is a combination of content creation, interaction, and assembly and sharing of content. The thing is not about the tools, and it’s not about the content: it’s about the act of collaboration and the result for the end user.

~ As previously separate institutions are brought together as one sector, the challenge becomes finding a way to bring together many different types of data. Thus, they refer to the systems discussed as being in “perpetual beta.”

~ “Discovery is global” — they want to move towards more global search capabilities, more akin to Google than to searching a single institution’s catalogue.

~ “Power of the network” — the more information that you have, the more can be done with it — able to use observations of prior users to assist newer users.

~ “Endless sharing” — the data is out there and can be used in many ways. “The power of the network will take over.” It is important to not just store information about collections on one’s own website, but also share it widely enough with other groups so that it is discoverable. From this stems the huge importance of standards.

~ A community may have more knowledge, collectively, than the institution. There should be a way to access this body of knowledge.

~ The software and metadata of these two systems are standardized. OurOntario is a subset of Alouette Canada, containing those records that are from Ontario or about Ontario. (This is superior to having the larger portal built up of smaller, regional portals — which would restrict the Ontario subset to institutions contributing to it directly–probably institutions from Ontario only.)

~ There already exist many excellent digital collections — the need is to enable discovery of those collections.

~ The national portal (Alouette) is not a replacement for strong provincial, local, or sectoral portals; it builds upon and depends upon their work. The large network improves sustainability of the project.

~ The attitudes of researchers are changing: they are beginning to expect that all material will be available digitally. This means that organizations that fund digital programs expect that there will be successful networks between projects.

~ Now a need to deal with user-created metadata, as well as that provided by the creator or archivist. There exists a large amount of information about digital objects that is not stored in the system.

~ These systems have a function that allow the archivist to ask questions about the digital object provided, in order to solicit particular community contributions. So far, this has worked fairly well.

~ Presented the notion of the archivist as a custodian, where the true story of the document belongs to its users.

~ A significant challenge is how to present the finding aid. New ways of doing so would be welcomed.

~ Users do not care much about the differences between libraries, archives, and other institutions. It is best to reduce the appearance of silos, of differences — to the end users, at least. Interfaces integrating data from multiple institutions should not go to effort to distinguish between types of institutions.

~ Very emphatic that they were not repackaging institutions’ content — that local brands are maintained. The portal points to existing sites.

~ Includes use of Google Maps to site geographic metadata — users can see and work with locations of photographs.

~ “At the heart of digitization lies collection management.” The digital collection/exhibit is (perhaps?) just another way of dealing with existing collections.

Questions:

(At this point, I was not keeping a record of who was asking and answering each question.)

~ How to help people understand that digital content is only a small portion of available content? –> Provide a blend between finding aids for digital and non-digital collections –> catalogues and finding aids should be digitized –> design towards a goal of “someday it will all be digitized”

~ How to simplify ordering of prints of photos? –> not solved yet –> Picture Australia currently working with Flickr

~ Sustainability is a problem: how to keep all this from disappearing? –> multiple copies, multiple hosting of metadata

~ Dealing with variety of standards? –> try to be un-dogmatic about the types of standards they accept –> handle a variety of formats –> working towards a METS solution –> each sector will standardize at lower levels –> though yes, standards are very very important.

Reactions:

As much as I love “2.0″, I’m also always skeptical about it — particularly how long these systems are expected to last. Sustainability is a real problem, exacerbated by rapid change: while something like this is really neat, it’s hard to tell if it’ll still seem as useful or important in five years.

I do agree with the basic premise that the user interface is hugely important. The more it looks like Google, the more people will come back to it: the ability to “search everything at once” is that important.

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t spent any time actually using Alouette or any of its subsets. Everything in this post is based on the presentation alone. This is certainly a topic I’d like to return to at a later date.

ACA 2007 Conference

Thursday, 21 June

9am: Plenary session: Senator Hugh Segal

This talk was ostensibly on “the importance of archives in a democratic society,” though it tended to wander through a number of sort-of kind-of issues.

Sen. Segal spoke on:

~ The Senate as a “storehouse of institutional memory”, in that the people with memories of how things had been done or what had happened are kept as “living exhibits” as for a museum. (Cue “preserved moose” jokes.)

~ The problem of a generation so consumed with itself that it lacks understanding of either history of the future.

~ People tend to concentrate on the how of technology rather than its content. Senator Segal did have a pronounced anti-technology stance: that the original document has a higher value than its digital version. (In this, I think he may not have been entirely familiar with the audience he was addressing.)

~ The historical record as fact: it cannot change, no matter what interpretations people embrace to explain or understand history.

~ The “information revolution” — the creation of a wide variety of documents “with claim to archival value” — and the challenge of sorting out these documents and finding the value.

~ The need for solid research skills as early as secondary school — arising from a need to understand the nature of sources and documentation.

~ That history must be fact-based

~ That all government documents should be in the public domain, and that the onus rests on the government to prove if for some reason individual documents should not be available to the public. The government works for the people, after all.

~ The suggestion that documents should be automatically made public after a 60- or 90-day period. The government has “nothing to hide,” and this is a principle of democracy.

In general, there wasn’t a lot here that hasn’t been said hundreds of times. I did approve of his statements on openness for government records, though in light of everything else I have to wonder whether he’s actually thought the implementation through.

The anti-technology stance was a bit silly. I had the impression that he thought he was playing to the audience — though given next year’s theme (”Archives and the Digital World”), he misjudged somewhat. At one point, the phrase “technologies you have to accomodate” was used — yes, I made a point of noting that down. It’s not a phrase that inspires much confidence. After all, isn’t “technology” created by people, for people, in order to improve the work they would do otherwise?

Not a particularly auspicious start to the conference, anyway, but I have every reason to be much more positive about the rest of the sessions.