Innovative ways, sustainable means

1. Innovative ways, sustainable means The Archives Hub and AIM25 Jane Stevenson and Geoff Browell

2. Hub and AIM25 benefits • Locate archives across a range of institutions • Save time and resources • Search by subject / name / place • Focus for archive community • Promotion of standards for robust and sustainable descriptions • Innovation and experimentation

3. JISC Information Environment • Providing a range of meaningful, rich and innovative methods of accessing electronic materials • A collaborative landscape of service providers who work together to seamlessly cater for the needs of the community on a national basis • Underpinned by real world interoperability, based upon a common standards framework JISC Information Environment Development Strategy [2001]

4. British Archives: the vision “Our vision of the future of British archives is of a flow of archival information which takes account of all the opportunities offered by digital networks and offers opportunity for exploration - historical, personal, social - to the broadest possible range of people wherever they can use it - in the home, the classroom or the office.” British Archives: The Way Forward (NCA, 2000)

5. The Archives 2.0 Manifesto • Positive • Active • Responsive • Open • Interactive • Experimental • User-focused • Participatory http://www.archivesnext.com

6. A new Mindset • An open and flexible approach to access, archives 2.0 should, fundamentally, be about developing a collaborative, transparent and user-focused approach, based on agreed standards, that enables others to engage with us and with the data that we hold on their own terms.

7. Implementation • How to move forward in a sustainable way? • What underlies an effective Archives 2.0 approach?

8. Underlying principles of the Hub • Data – standards, quality • Software – open source • System – interoperable, distributed • Development – user-focused, innovative

9. Data • EAD – Encoded Archival Description • ISAD(G) • Indexing standards • Manual data editing • Validation through Template for data creation and editing • Training and raising awareness

10. Software • Cheshire 3 and Cheshire for Archives • Open source • Flexible • In-house development

11. Interoperable System • Ability to interoperate – exchange data between systems • Data working for benefit of users • The Archives Hub and AIM25 - EAD • CALM and AdLib • Datasets?

12. Distributed System • Spokes institutions • control • administer • customised web interface • Hosted spokes http://kirkland.dur.ac.uk/ead/ http://cheshire.cent.gla.ac.uk/ead/search.html Flickr cc licence : Thomas Hawk

13. Open System • Machine-to-machine interfaces • Z39.50; OAI-PMH; SRU • Genesis portal for Women’s Studies – SRU search of the Hub To be a part of the JISC-IE, content providers need to support machine- oriented interfaces to their resources.

14. Development • Steering Committee • Contributors’ Forum • Contributors’ Community • Blog, newsletters, email lists • National Archives Network

15. National Archive Network

17. AIM25 • 10 years-old • 10,000 descriptions • 100 partners • Up to 2m hits per month • Google-visible • Becoming a hub for London • LMA latest partner • 2008-2009 upgrade – new descriptions, improved website, interoperability with M25 • Partner-led with central indexing standards • Forum to lead on standards, fundraising, sector issues

18. AIM25 and Archives 2.0 • Asked ourselves - who uses it? • Avoid features for sake of it – what is the demand? Do users have the time – vast majority of users are under 1 minute • If colleagues don’t know what a tag cloud or social networking are, will users? • Can we afford it or do others do it better already – Facebook? • Most users are probably not Californian teenagers

19. AIM25: What did we do? • Moderated Web 2.0 – democracy or benign dictatorship? • Avoided social networking • Hybrid tag clouds • Information alerts on new collections – RSS • Improving searching with cross searching with M25 – (‘isn’t it all just information?’)

20. Benefits • More contemporary feel • Help with fundraising • Users able to sift information more effectively and cross-search • Helps cultivate a ‘brand’. As catalogue information becomes more easily retrievable and machine-readable, so the ‘extra features’ and the trusted name become more important • These extras might include podcast lectures, National Curriculum tie-ins or dramatic re-enactments, extra bibliographic or catalogue content (‘you’re interested in that item, have you seen this?’), mapping or the ability to interact with other users

21. Right and wrong reasons • Right: improves the work of Archives, collecting, preserving and making records accessible for current and future generations • Wrong: for its own sake; next ‘thing’; pressure to be fashionable; ‘cure-all’ or technical shortcut

22. Archives 2.0: Barriers • Legal barriers (can’t publish everything) • Cost barriers (hidden costs such as training, IT development, policing UGC) • Conflicting audiences (all things to all men) • Over-expectations (limited resources of sector): will users become restive if they are used to Flickr or Facebook and get FORTRAN? • Can’t manage resulting demand • Knowledge/training gap (many archivists are unfamiliar with standards or terminology) • Danger of following fashion for its own sake – when is a paradigm shift not a paradigm shift?

23. Searching Questions • How far do we want users to be sharing and engaging – do they want to? • Danger of users thinking everything is up for grabs, ‘Can’t I just publish any photograph I come across in your archive?’ • Role of the finding aid and its integrity – reliability of catalogues. What role is there for expert input? • Danger of ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’

24. Talking points • Better market research needed • Greater standardisation of statistics to gauge usage • Do users want it and can we afford the time, money and energy to handle the consequences? • Will management understand the implications or do they think it is technological panacea? (‘Can’t you just digitise everything?’) • Archivists need to understand the implications in order to educate institutions of the costs/benefits • Technologising the relationships which archivists have always cultivated – with donors, users and the public. So is it doing more of what we do well already?

25. Talking points • Do we get the basics right first? (cataloguing backlogs, basic digitisation and improved physical access) • Standards – electronic and ethical • The role of the archivist from intercessor/ intermediary to facilitator in a personal relationship or journey of discovery through records: an Archive equivalent of the Protestant Reformation? • Knowledge, expertise and interpretive skills remain at the heart of the profession

26. Archives 2.0 will be… • Relevant • Sustainable • Skills-based • Fun • Result in greater co-operation and networking between all types of archive institution • A journey not a destination

27. Contact details • Jane Stevenson: jane.stevenson@manchester.ac.uk • Geoff Browell: geoffrey.browell@kcl.ac.uk Visit the National Archives Network social space: http://archivesnetwork.ning.com/ Check out the Hub blog: http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/blog/ Check out the Archives Hub twitter http://twitter.com/archiveshub