Refactoring and Reframing Collecting in a Digital Age or staring into the abyss.

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Refactoring and Reframing Collecting in a Digital
Age or staring into the abyss.

• Michael Moss

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Living Information TNA vision for the future

• Increasingly, people expect to find, use and
  learn from information online. They expect it to
  be personalised and connected to their wider
  lives. They expect to have it immediately.
• We need to rise to the new challenge of ensuring
  the survival of digital information for future
  generations, in addition to preserving the
  nations existing paper records.

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Archives for the 21st Century3. Digital
Preservation

• The risk of a black hole in history is avoided
  through effective digital record-keeping
• The capability and capacity of the archives
  sector to preserve and provide access to digital
  records is enhanced
• Users have improved access to collections to
  support research, learning and enjoyment

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4. Online access and collection development

• Goals
• The audience for archival information is
  broadened and enlarged, and users have access to
  the archival resources they need and want
• Institutions are increasingly able to make
  information about their collections available to
  the public and thereby unlock their potential
• Archives have the capacity and appropriate
  facilities to collect material of long-term value
  in all formats from relevant organisations and
  individuals

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Actions under 3 and 4

• Develop partnerships for the delivery of digital
  preservation to ensure access to the capability,
  with the support of The National Archives.
• Develop large-scale commercial digitisation
  projects with the support of archival
  institutions.

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Digital preservation v Digitization

• Not one and the same thing.
• Costs formidable
• Digital preservation essential to avoid the black
  hole
• But . . . Is it not as much a matter of
  re-establishing process lost in the digital age?

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Jonathan Powell

• A. Yes, I thought I might be asked that question
  because it may seem odd to people from outside,
  so I looked through the diary for the two weeks
  of the period we are talking about and the usual
  pattern is about three written records for 17
  meetings a day is sort of the average you get to
  because there is no purpose served by minutes
  unless they are either recording people visiting
  from outside, the president of Nigeria, or
  something like that, or if they are action points
  that need to be taken forward, something on
  school funding for example.

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The activities of their department seemed to be
shrouded in mystery something to do with
records or filing, it was thought, nobody knew
for certain, but it was evidently womens work
the kind of thing that could easily be replaced
by a computer
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The Information Agenda

• It is where the money (such as there is) will be.
• It must contribute to the bottom line and not
  simply be an added cost.
• Involves interaction with other professionals
  risk managers, hr, auditors, ICT.
• KIM is an evolving discipline.

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Accessioning digital content

• Different from analogue
• Harvesting web pages
• Ingesting
• No one will add metadata unless it adds value
• Traditional cataloguing impractical
• Sensitivity review?

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Digitization and digital access

• Transforming research and scholarship
• Catalogue
• Books
• Manuscripts
• Progress differential at national and local
  level.
• Issues of granularity the genealogical
  imperative.
• Overburdening the catalogue.

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Digitization

• Progress differential
• The genealogical imperative
• Sustainability
• maintenance
• Not like analogue publishing expectation they
  will be dynamic
• NOF Digitize 150 projects 50 million

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NOF Digitize

• A fairly recent survey by Alastair Dunning at
  JISC revealed that most of this content still
  exists, but effectively in a state of suspended
  animation, without investment or manpower to
  bring it to its intended audience. 2009

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Digital content

• There is much more to this than creating a
  digitization service or a preservation strategy.
• Sustainability gap.
• The party is over few grants.
• Revenue streams the punters are going to have
  to pay much more.

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Into the Unknown

• These are competing agendas for archives and
  special collections.
• It is going to be very very tough.
• The digital makes it even tougher.
• Special collections are largely a humanities
  resource and libraries have much wider
  constituencies.
• Even before the cuts budgets were under enormous
  pressure.

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Bigger, better and sustainable services

• Mergers Hull History Centre.
• Partnerships, particularly for digital
  preservation.
• Agreed national and even EU strategies that are
  federal in outlook.
• Greater use of volunteers.
• Acceptance of higher charges.

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Avoid the gulag - Existing business models will
not work.

• Plan for the worst and if it turns out better
  then you feel good.
• Co-operate and collaborate.
• In the UK need for leadership now the MLA has
  been abolished.
• Need for a strong unified voice that straddles
  competing agendas.
• There are too many bodies with stakeholder
  interests in the digital.