Also noted: some of these requests are for information that should be publicly release-able without going through the FOI process.

Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t be processing those. I should be returning applications and fees back to the requesters, and telling them who in the various city departments to contact instead. But often I simply do the requests like any other.

The reason is the same reason why these requesters are going through the FOI process rather than just asking: many people feel much more comfortable dealing with a neutral third party.

Say you’re an average citizen, living a quiet life. And then something happens that you care very much about, to the point where you need to speak up. So now you’re writing the newspaper, you’re organizing protest groups, you’re making deputations to Council, talking to City administration about your issue. In order to do a decent job of it, you need information — you need the same information that your political opponents have access to. And the people you need to get the information from are the ones you believe to be against you.

I am not saying that City staff are hostile, or have been refusing to release information that should be public. But when tensions are high, you need someone who can take a neutral stance. Requesters like that I’m someone they’ve never met before, working in a different physical location, and sticking to provincial law by meeting deadlines and keeping them anonymous. It makes for, I think, a much safer-feeling environment when going up against bureaucracy. And I’ve been told that quite directly, a number of times: “I’d rather just pay the application fee and deal with you guys instead.”

The third way, of course, is releasing much more information proactively.

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.

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.

The process of regaining custody of 3 years of conversation with 200+ people will probably be a challenge: a nice evenings-and-weekends project that I’m sure to learn some valuable skills from. I’ve been concerned, generally, with those sorts of issues for a while, but there’s nothing like being faced with actually having to do it for motivation to take things seriously.

Facebook worked for me because enough of my friends were also using it — and it enabled me to participate in that social sphere. By staying away, I’d be cut off. Sad but true: out of the people I went to school with, it’s the ones who use Facebook that I’m still in touch with regularly.

But why did I ever trust the thing in the first place? At the start of 2007 things seemed all right. Yes, there were issues with corporate ownership of personal data, but somehow I and millions of other people were prepared to overlook that in exchange for terrific functionality. There were enough people around who were smart and passionate and cared about privacy that I assumed things could only get better. Oops.

So once Conference Season and Wedding Season are over, I’ll be doing what I can to reassert control. On August 31, there will be a go/no go decision. And I’ll be watching Diaspora* with interest.

It just seems to make more sense to have the updated content on the landing page, and static material in a special location.

Of course, that only works if the content is regularly updated. But things have been interesting lately.

The seminar I attended Wednesday had two talks: the first, addressed to “managers,” I found to be mostly things I already knew. The second, addressed to front-line IT staff, went a bit over my head (perhaps in part because of excessive TLAs.) No big deal, though; that was just for interest’s sake.

Today, though, dealing with a software sales rep, exactly the same problem came up again, and this time it was interfering with my ability to do my job. When I’m being sold a “solution,” I’m not going to be very impressed by a shiny front-end, I want to see a bit of how the data is structured and what’s going to be involved in setting up and maintaining the thing. Instead I got this:

“Can you show me a bit more of how this is set up on the back end?”

“It uses Java. Do you know how to program in Java?”

“No.”

“All right, well, here’s a bit of the code, and our experts can do this for you, now here’s another look at the search screen that your users will see …” etc etc.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I don’t think that just because I can’t write the code myself, I don’t deserve an account of what it is doing. This same vendor threw a lot of jargon at me, in an attempt (I think?) to impress me, and took issue with most of the comments I made based on my having got some of the terminology wrong.

So maybe this one is a bit of an extreme case. Still, I’m noticing this sort of thing all over the place. I deal with our IT department a lot, and with each new contact the first assumption is that I’d know next to nothing about what’s going on.  I’ve been able to “train” the people I work with frequently, but it seems like a new challenge every time. It’s a process, I guess.

“Why exactly do you need a degree to do that sort of stuff?”

It’s not the first time I’ve encountered skepticism of this sort. Neither archives nor records management is really a high profile position (except in those television shows where people break into filing cabinets in dark basements to find all the answers) but I’ve even seen people wondering why librarians need degrees. And the public tends to know what librarians are.

It’s also a great question to be asked, because it means I get to give an answer. I’m never sure if the answer I’m giving is good enough, though — especially when it starts from a place where I feel defensive.

It may be the sort of thing that I should prepare an elevator pitch for: one of those pat, 30-second answers that sums up everything and that I don’t need to scramble for when put on the spot.

What is the best way to deal with this sort of thing?

Yesterday, nothing was planned except for tours, and we did indeed run those. Considerably more people turned up than had in the previous days. The main “what I learned” from yesterday thus was that scale is important, and that presenting the mini-exhibits to a group of 12 people is a lot harder than only 4 or 5 at once.

Haven’t got the official numbers yet, but it looks like there were close to 40 drop-ins yesterday, which is actually close to what I was expecting for the whole week. A few of those people also had their own particular research interests, that I was able to address. I know of at least 3 that are coming back next week to work. Another couple, based on what they read in the paper, brought in a family photograph and a story which augments one of the files we were discussing.

Part of me is thinking “this is what Archives is supposed to be” — at least, based on all available literature about outreach and engaging the public. This institution hasn’t had much opportunity to make that first step, in the past. There’s always a lot to do, of course, but for years and years it seems that getting control over the collections was the only priority.

I think that might be changing a bit. I’m glad to be involved in that.

And also, many many meetings.

And  drop-ins, which was neat, too. The press we had yesterday seems to have an impact — despite not starting the official tours until 1 today there were still more visitors than yesterday.

I’m a bit tired, though. There was a lot more running around — mostly in that I had to set up and take down one of the exhibits twice in order to make room for the meetings, and spent the extra time I had writing a press release for something unrelated.

The kids were great. They were pretty interested in all the old stuff, and were utterly thrilled by some things I wasn’t expecting: riding the freight elevator, wearing the white gloves, and using the microfilm machine. Though I suppose from the perspective of someone that young, microfilm is a weird, mysterious, antique technology. Same way I’d feel playing around with anything using punch cards.

Anyway, there’s one day left of all this madness, and it should be just regular tours with no extras.

As tired as I was by the end of today (also stayed 45 min late) I’m very, very pleased that we did this. It’s been great for the Archives, great for the public (I hope!) and a fantastic learning experience.

Looks as though all the media contact yesterday paid off: last night the Archives tours were covered on the local news, and this morning we were also featured in the newspaper.

Of course, just for fun, it was the very same day that Thunder Bay made international news, and an excellent photograph of one of our staff was displayed on the front page right next to the “Runaway Pilot” headline. It was an interesting juxtaposition, I’d have to say.

The media coverage did us well: even though today’s tours were originally billed “for City staff” we had a number of members of the general public drop by — including one fellow who heard about this all on the classic rock station.

Aside from the increased numbers, today was pretty much the same. Tomorrow there will be children. I’ve also had to take down one of the exhibits to make room for a meeting tomorrow; I’ll then put it up again, then take it down again, then put it up again. (And I suppose take it down one final time once the week is finished.) There is something to be said for the simplicity of “lay it all out on a table.”