do digital archivists dream of electronic records

DO DIGITAL ARCHIVISTS DREAM OF ELECTRONIC RECORDS?

GRETCHEN M. GUEGUENSLab Speaker Series, February 13,

2013

What Are Archives?

Archives• Materials created or received by a person, family,

or organization, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information they contain or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the principles of provenance, original order, and collective control; permanent records.

-Society of American Archivists

What do Archivists Do?

• Respect des fonds• Original order• Collective control

Theimer, Kate. 2012. “Archives in Context and as Context.” Journal of Digital Humanities. 1:2. http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/archives-in-context-and-as-context-by-kate-theimer/

Context• The document’s place in a larger information

landscape• The objective or social environment in which the

document existed• The mental or physical state and identity of the

creator of the document-Lee, Cal. (2011). A Framework for contextual information in digital collections. Journal of Documentation. 67:1. 95-143.

Wisdom

Knowledge

Information

Data

It’s in the

Archives

It’s Saved

It’s Written Down

Stuff Happens

DISRUPTIONS

It’s in the

ArchivesIt’s

Saved

It’s Written Down

Stuff Happens

DISRUPTIONS

It’s in the Archives

It’s Saved

Stuff Happens

It’s Written Down

Weingerger, David. (2012). Too Big to Know. New York: Basic Books.

What is “Digital”

Self-contextualizing

Searchable

Perfect Duplication

Dependencies

Transformative

What are Digital Archives?

Standardization• Archival Description Standards

o EAD and EAC-CPFo ISAD(G), ISAAR, ISDF, ISDIAHo DACS and RAD

• Conceptual Models

Capture and Analysis• Web archive crawl and analysis tools• Metadata extraction and creation• Algorithmic tools for fixity and identification

Redefining Discovery• How can archival materials be found and used

without losing context?

Re-Creations• Emulating Environments• “Enhanced Curation”- John, Jeremy Leighton. “The future of saving our past.” Nature 459, 775-776 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/459775a.html

Implications• Less Appraisal, more searching• Authority is waning, but so is bias, perhaps• Summary will be less important, but over-

generalization will not be as much of a drawback• Incomplete conversion to new paradigm

THANKS!Gretchen Gueguen

http://gretchengueguen.com

gmg2n@virginia.edu