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equivalentideas / independent-archive-principles

A set of starting point principles for independent, public-interest archive projects.
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New principle around engagement and perspectives #6

Open equivalentideas opened 10 years ago

equivalentideas commented 10 years ago

Currently the goal “Engage new people in the records” isn't really reflected in the principles.

In the comments over on the article, Chris C says:

One thing that occurs to me as important for principles in the long term is a comittment to developing better ways to use archives. One of the problems I think in dealing with the avalanche of data in available collections is that the simple methods of tagging, basic visualisation, etc that we have to organise and get sense out of archives don't scale well. We need much more sophisticated tools that work across media and allow more abstract leftfield questions to be asked, like a more complex open ended humanities version of Wolfram Alpha.

Cassie Findlay:

is there a need for something on respecting and bringing in the people / communities with a stake in the records. I'm thinking of someone setting up an IA of records relating to say former wards of the State. How can your archive incorporate their perspectives? This sort of goes to your accessibility / openness principle too..

How can archives incorporate perspectives and invite new questions/approaches?

I think this is important to the idea of an independent archive project: engaging and reflecting human perspectives.

What are others thinking?

CassPF commented 10 years ago

Think there are two ways into this: 1) the participation of people / groups in the recordkeeping that results in the archive, and in its management over time; and 2) the ways we can make records more usable and allow people to interact with them in new and more meaningful ways. On 1): depending on the mandate of the archive, is there a way to involve people more directly in how it is built, how records are kept, what records are kept and so on. The Monsah Uni Trust & Technology project is a good example of exploring this stuff. Some of its aims were: * To examine how archival techniques and information technology can be used to build trusted archival systems to support archival services that meet the needs of Indigenous people, and * To build a prototype preservation and access system which will demonstrate how the needs of Indigenous communities might be met. Its final report is here: http://infotech.monash.edu/research/about/centres/cosi/projects/trust/final-report/ On 2) I totally agree - archives (can) contain so much data, (incl metadata about physical collns), we need solutions that cope with scale, and which maximise the benefits of it as well. Linked open data has great promise; the challenge is having archives - including independent ones - make data available in suitable forms. The best person on the power of open data for archives is Tim Sherratt: http://discontents.com.au/a-map-and-some-pins-open-data-and-unlimited-horizons/

equivalentideas commented 10 years ago

These are both fantastic references @CassPF , and I think these are the two key angles.

I have a very broad take on accessibility and providing access, which I feel both these points could fall into. I think one question is whether "accessibility" and "engagement" are separate segments of a project, and should be considered separately. I believe they are the same and considering them together will provide a more considered, sustainable management of interaction/access.

Could these become individual points within the principle: "Strive for universal accessibility, be accessible by default"? I've started an issue to outline the idea for listing many different parts of accessibility https://github.com/equivalentideas/independent-archive-principles/issues/7 .