AERI 2011 – Boston

1. AERI 2011 – Boston Grand Challenges in Archival Education and Research Sue McKemmish

2. Grand Societal Challenges • Peace and Security • Peace building • Countering terrorism • Decolonization • Development • Democracy, governance and well being • Social and economic development • Sustainable development • Human Rights • Violence against women and children • Genocide • Indigenous peoples • Human trafficking • Treatment of refugees United Nations Website: http://www.un.org/en/

3. Grand Societal Challenges • Global financial crisis • Climate change • Green economy • Environmental knowledge for change • Health and well being • Social justice • Digital divide/information divide • Corporate governance, accountability, transparency • Sustainable communities • Communities in flux • Democratisation – “citizen society” • Globalisation • Localisation Government, Community, Advocacy Websites

4. Grand Societal Challenges • human rights • self-determination • freedom from discrimination • civil rights • cultural rights • socio-economic rights • cultural rights • land rights • memory rights • information rights

5. Research & Education Challenges, Partnerships, “Killer Questions”, Problems & Capabilities • Identifying research and education challenges associated with Grand Societal Challenges • Forming partnerships around related “killer questions” (academics, organisations, communities) • Deconstructing the questions into research and education problems to be addressed by programs and projects • Putting together required knowledge and skill set (discipline and domain expertise, research strengths) • Developing/putting together required governance and infrastructure (including research and education frameworks, ethical frameworks, technologies, systems, research methodologies, methods, techniques, pedagogies) • Securing funding/resourcing

6. Grand Societal Challenge: Effective Healthcare in USA • safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable healthcare is not being delivered • health care processes becoming more complex and more time-constrained; demands placed on care providers becoming more intense • short-term, incremental improvements required • long-term transformation of healthcare system essential

7. Health Informatics Challenge • Healthcare is an information and knowledge intensive enterprise, but healthcare IT and information systems are poorly designed Computational Technology for Effective Health Care (National Academies, Washington; www.nap.edu/catalog/12572.html; accessed 08072011)

8. Health Informatics Research Problem • 21st century health care requires intensive, patient-centred information* and knowledge# management, using interoperable IT and information systems to create, acquire, manage, analyze, integrate, and deliver relevant, timely, reliable information from multiple sources to multiple locations, and to document patient-doctor interaction, treatments, patient monitoring and outcomes in patient records • Nationwide frameworks are required to ensure the interoperability of systems across organizations, and data sharing and integration across systems *Information includes medical records, lab test results, prevention and treatment information, drug information, financial information, research data, best practice data #Knowledge resides in medical literature, individual clinicians, care providers and patients, health care processes, organizational culture

9. Health & Well Being: Health Informatics Programs @ Monash • Optimal eHealthcare • Meeting people’s needs while minimising cost • Optimising health care related information resources and their deployment in and across organisations • Optimising health care infrastructure and systems • iHealth • Modeling the Virtual Patient • Simulations which integrate research and best practice data with data specific to individual patient • Integrated data on conditions, preventative measures, treatments and outcomes • mHealthcare • Health care any place any time, using mobile devices and sensor networks in hospital, clinic, and home • Self-documenting environments to capture provider-patient interaction and patient monitoring data • Supporting telemedicine and remote delivery of health care • eDoctors, eCarers, ePatients* • Delivering timely, relevant, reliable health information to enable health care providers and carers, and empower patients to become expert in managing their own conditions • Modeling and supporting multi-player decision-making • Integrating data from multiple sources Discipline and Domain Expertise Medicine * Health Studies * Expert Patient KnowledgeData Mining * Computer Modeling of Complex Systems * Simulation and Visualization * Reasoning Under Uncertainty * High Performance Computing * Optimisation * Mobile Computing * Sensor Networks * Data Management & Accessibility * Knowledge Management * Records Management and Archives * Imaging * Multimedia Applications * Information and Decision Support Systems * System Interoperability * Human-Computer Interaction * Biomedical Informatics * Community Informatics http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/challenges/health-wellbeing/

10. Grand Societal Challenge: Closing the Gap for Indigenous Australians • Closing the gap in all areas and achieving better social and economic outcomes – life expectancy, child mortality, literacy and numeracy, Yr 12 attainment rates, employment • Valuing the cultural history and knowledge of Indigenous people: Indigenous culture is a critical part of Australia’s identity and strengthening it is a core element of sustaining a strong and healthy Indigenous community Australia 2020 Summit, Government Response, Chapter 7: Options for the future of Indigenous Australia http://www.australia2020.gov.au/response/index.cfm; accessed 08072011

11. Social and Community Informatics Challenges and Research Questions • How can social and community informatics support sustainable Indigenous communities by promoting social inclusion and bridging the digital and information divides? • What are the best ways to optimise the use of digital technologies to document, record, share and celebrate Indigenous knowledge and culture, locally and globally? • How can social and community informatics support community-centred, participatory research which articulates, strengthens, preserves, disseminates and celebrates Indigenous culture to sustain Indigenous communities, and play an integral part in Australian identity?

12. Closing the Gap for Indigenous Australians: Social and Community Informatics Programs @ Monash Bridging the Digital Divide: Opening Digital Doorways Bridging the Information Divide: Smart Information Portals Doing IT and IM Better in Indigenous Community Organisations Indigenous Archiving and Knowledge Management Monash Country Lines Archive: Visualising Country Working With Communities as Partners in Education and Research Discipline and Domain KnowledgeIndigenous Studies * Indigenous Knowledge * Community Knowledge Data Mining * Animation, Simulation and Visualization * Mobile Computing * Sensor Networks * Data Management & Accessibility * Knowledge Management * Records Management and Archives * Imaging * Multimedia and Games Applications * Information and Decision Support Systems * Human-Computer Interaction * Community Informatics http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/challenges/social-inclusion/

13. Archival Challenges – Challenging Archival Discipline and Practice • Archival theory, meta-prescriptions, principles, concepts • Archival functionality – e.g. appraisal, metadata and descriptive regimes, access • Archival structures, strategies and tactics

14. Grand Societal Challenges and Archival Challenges: Examples Peace and Security Decolonization Development Democratization Governance & well being Human Rights Indigenous peoples Climate Change Green economy Social Justice/Inclusion Bridging digital/information divide Decolonizing the archive, archival functionality and recordkeeping practice Archival access Accountability & transparency Participatory archival models; sustainable community archives An integrated global archive of records relating to climate change Bridging the archival divide Diversifying the profession

15. Brainstorming Session • Imagine a UN Archives and Evidence Commission on climate change or any other global problem/grand societal challenge* • AERI has been asked: • to identify associated archival research and education challenges; and to recommend partnerships, programs and projects to address them • Your task: • Identify ONE archival research and/or education challenge • Link it to related societal challenge(s) • Identify partners (academic, organisations, communities) with expertise and domain knowledge needed to address the archival challenge • List programs/projects • Reflect on experience, expertise and knowledge you could bring to the table *Recently proposed by Frank Upward

16. Archival Grand Challenge #1: the archival multiverse • Building inclusive archival education curriculum, teaching and learning • Engaging educators, students, communities • Diversifying the profession Can we move from “an archival universe dominated by one cultural paradigm to an archival multiverse; from a world constructed in terms of “the one” and “the other” to a world of multiple ways of knowing and practicing, of multiple narratives co-existing in one space”? Pluralizing the Archival Curriculum Group, ‘Educating for the archival multiverse’ American Archivist Spring, 2011

17. I want to tell a different story. It’s about how Aboriginal people can be the authors of our stories and not the passive and powerless subjects of stories told and written by others. It is the role of government and others, including archivists and recordkeepers to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to move from passive and powerless subjects to active participatory agents. I hope my insights assist in pushing towards an archive and recordkeeping system that facilitates the active participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, 12 October 2010 http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/index.html Valuing the cultural history and knowledge of Indigenous people: Indigenous culture is a critical part of Australia’s identity and strengthening it is a core element of sustaining a strong and healthy Indigenous community Australia 2020 Summit, Government Response, Chapter 7: Options for the future of Indigenous Australia http://www.australia2020.gov.au/response/index.cfm • Archival Grand Challenge #2 • Educating archivists and records managers to engage with Indigenous issues. • Researching how to embed Indigenous human rights in archival law, policy, culture and practice.

18. WikiLeaks: a radical break with traditional time-based access regimes and “let the dust settle” approaches to appraisal “WikiLeaks is forcing an agenda for greater access to contemporary records as a means by which an informed citizenry is empowered to test relationships of power exercised in their name. The impetus for greater democratization of the archive is being embraced in theory in the open access and transparency agendas of various agencies of power within our society. Yet this actually entails radical change globally, not piecemeal, uncoordinated action at national and state level.” (Barbara Reed in Frank Upward, Sue McKemmish & Barbara Reed (2011), “Archivists and Changing Social and Information Spaces: A continuum approach to recordkeeping and archiving in online cultures”, Archivaria 72 (in press)

19. Archival Grand Challenge #3: addressing plurality and complexity “WikiLeaks is a provocative instance of an aberrant, digital archive which reinvents professional structures, strategies and tactics to deal with the complexity of place, time, volume, authority and ultimately accountability in our online recordkeeping present and future, while demonstrating innovative use of Web technologies.” Barbara Reed (op.cit.) Complexity and plurality of the worlds of recorded information in online cultures • Are archival theories and practice up for it? • What constitutes the archive/archival functionality in online cultures? • Can we transform archival functionality and professional recordkeeping practice to better engage with complexity and plurality. • Can we develop global and local archival structures, strategies and tactics to address “the infinitely expanding … continuum of recorded information that is engulfing us” (Frank Upward). Can we transform education and deliver research outcomes to address plurality and complexity?