Year in Review of Digital Archivy Projects
Our year in review of Digital Archivy reveal one unsurprising conclusion. In an era of Big Data, digital archiving and preservation provide the most effective and efficient ways to manage, leverage and use historic materials and information. Last year, Digital Archivy worked closely with some impressive organizations. We helped create archival projects that were tailored to serve their specific needs, goals, requirements, timelines, and budget.
As you can see from the list below, the projects all raise awareness, improve control and add value. We help organizations develop digital preservation strategies, digitize and license raw footage, compare and rate different Digital Asset Management (DAM) options, and build trusted digital library prototypes that provide access to hidden historic materials.
“Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage” (HBO)
Recent Digital Archivy Projects
We met and faced new challenges and learned a lot over the past year. It was intimidating and fun! Fortunately, our clients were willing to hear out and test out different options and find solutions that were the most effective and useful. Our new client projects included everything from film production studios, magazine publisher, and a few non-profit organizations, foundations and charities.
- Assisted a children’s rights organization in updating digital preservation and access strategy, implementation road map, timeline and budget
- Digitized and licensed Super 8 film and digitized and transcribed on-site audio recordings for
- Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (Raw TV/Netflix),
- Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (HBO Max), and
- BURN IT DOWN! (Dorothy Street Pictures and Rolling Stone)
- Developed a DAM Scorecard to assist a non-profit foundation compare and select a DAM
- Launched Digital Library Archive of 30+ years of a groundbreaking lesbian magazine.
As a result, we learned that projects may differ in time, budget and complexity, but Digital Archivy is effective by working closely with clients. We work best when we help people who have a vision, an awareness and sense of pride in their history and collections. Our clients want to share with others and support their stakeholders. We help them do that and make their information more valuable and less vulnerable. No job is too small or big!
Potential Digital Archivy Projects
So the question is: what’s next? Are there any projects that you are facing that seem impossible and could use some support?
For example, do you have
- a collection of Family Photo Albums or Scrapbooks gathering dust? – These could be digitized and made accessible everywhere online!
- a list of awards and honors that your institution has received? – These could be analyzed to find insights on trends and patterns!
- different types of media content and formats on related subjects? – These could be preserved and made accessible via online platform!
- an Excel spreadsheet with a lot of data but is incomprehensible? – Data analytics and pivot tables can reveal new and useful insights!
“Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99” (RawTV/NetFlix)
Check out our proof-of-concept Digital Archive Library prototype for Talker of the Town. If you’d like to learn more, please contact us directly.
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Quarantined Archiving – “Time flies like an arrow”
“Time flies like an arrow,
fruit flies like a banana.” —Groucho Marx
Quarantined Archiving
The other day, I was thinking about quarantined archiving. While quarantined, time flew like a uni-directional arrow. Many individuals faced challenges as they learned to work from home. They created content, workflows and information ecosystems that worked for them. But if they named files inconsistently or stored assets haphazardly, no one ever noticed.
As employees return to the office, they realize what they need to do. They must identify and transfer the files they created to their shared network, and let their supervisor know. If they keep the files on their local system, their employer will lose a chunk of its history.
Two Strategies for Digital Access and Quarantined Archiving
There are two different strategies for this. Obviously, the institutional requirements and habits of the individual affect one another. If, for example, the individual is well-organized and keeps files in chronological order and named consistently, then it should be relatively easy. Simply locate the folder with the files and rename it and transfer the folder to the Intranet.
While this might seem simple and intuitive, it’s actually a bad answer! When an individual transfers a folder, then all content is transferred, good and bad, fresh, raw and rotted. This strategy would attract fruit flies to the rotten bananas. Ultimately, this strategy is more time-consuming and negatively affects usability. It also complicates search, hinders retrieval times, and adds complexity and cost. But by mixing “final approved” files with drafts and old versions, users are more likely to find and distribute the wrong version.
Quarantined Archiving Second Strategy – Develop a Core Collection
The second strategy is much more effective and efficient. It is standards-based, task-oriented, and user-focused. By using this strategy, the user (creator) develops items for a Core Collection. With an eye towards migrating to a central repository, the inventory will list all projects, dates and deliverables. This will serve as a structure to identify the size, scope and complexity.
The files, their storage locations, and other important requirements will be transferred with the files themselves. This user-focused strategy builds trust. The inventory can be used to document transfer of custody and help identify gaps in documentation.
Back to the Future Office
When employees return to the office, they will need a reliable and systematic way to transfer files they’ve created. This is critical. It is impossibly hard to decide, in the moment or many months later, what has or will have historic value. The transition of content from operational usage to routine deliverables to one of great historic value is subjective and changes over time.
In contrast, most project management software focuses on a near-term foundation and clearly-defined deliverables. It requires a project title, a list of contributors, and a target date, destination, and deadline. These are the primary components needed to manage a collection of assets and deliverables. Each contributor’s work is clear on a schedule, and each contributor completes his/her work on schedule, and then hands it off to the next.
These sequential workflows are effective until a problem arises. For example, if the first contributor is out, then the rest of the schedule could be affected. Good archiving practices focus on the content or the assets. Best practice, built on archival standards, should be implemented early. It builds trust and responsiveness. In other words, a seamless and efficient transfer of assets to a centralized repository is a critical step.
Conclusion
Quarantined archiving provides first-hand evidence of the critical need for archiving. Successful creators or collectors of content are proactive. They help transfer, share and centralize the content and notify the appropriate people. Yes, time flies when you’re in quarantined archiving, but you still have to protect your bananas.
If you need assistance or guidance in thinking about this or other archiving challenges, feel free to contact Digital Archivy directly.
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Use Cases Build Better Responsiveness
Effective, practical and typical use cases build better responsiveness. One of the most critical components of a successful system is its responsiveness to users and their needs. In planning projects and in designing use cases, it is essential to work with stakeholders. Ultimately, their insights provide direction needed to develop a variety of typical task-oriented and user-driven scenarios. Good responsiveness requires a clear understanding of how People, Process and Technology work together to build an effective information ecosystem. It’s like the roots of a tree that feed content and nutrients to the leaves on the branches.
Tree with roots for Use Cases
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There are a number of moving parts in every system, but the most important part is the end users. That is why it is so critical to identify key stakeholders early. By defining a Designated Community, stakeholders and super-users can give input and help design solutions they need. User feedback combined with background knowledge help determine technical, administrative, legal, and descriptive requirements. Though each designated community is different, most share similar requirements based on content, its value, time limits, and the function of the system itself.
Use Cases Terminology
An effective Use Case demands a Designated Community with Personas, plus an awareness and familiarity with shared content in the Knowledgebase. These components make it easy to build applicable Use Cases with an understanding of each term.
Designated Community – Designated Communities represent a particular audience imagined by Open Archival Information System (OAIS) standard. It is an audience of stakeholders that produce, consume, and use content that needs to be preserved. The Designated Communities are end users and, as described by the OAIS standard, Consumers.
Personas – A Persona is an archetypical user of a system. In general, personas are fictitious people based on real-life users. Effective and well-defined User Personas require familiarity with the user, needs, workflows, frustrations and pain points, and the types of content.
Knowledgebase – The Knowledgebase contains all the content, including all formats. Whether it’s a shared drive or a DAM, an audit of content will require data on date ranges, directory names and file sizes, file formats, and more. This creates awareness of the content and makes it easier to establish a holistic strategy to connect users to resources.
Effective Use Cases
Effective Use Cases are targeted directly to the Designated Community. These solutions focus on specific needs and perspectives of Personas. With this understanding and a familiarity with the collection, it is easier to create more relevant use cases. The best designed use cases are built with an understanding and empathy for the personas and users.
Depending on the needs of the institution, use cases should address practical, tactical, typical and critical needs. The most successful ones address the needs of users. More importantly, though, solutions can be scaled to address new or changing requirements. Effective Use Cases ensure the system is responsive to its users. This builds long-term solutions that are familiar, easy to understand, and user-focused.
For more info about the OAIS standard, check out the tutorial and training resources at CESSDA.EU
If you have any questions or need suggestions, contact us!
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Greatest Digital Archiving Challenge of All
The greatest digital archiving challenge of all is documenting change and continuity over time. We refer to it as Cloud Control.
As archiving technologies change, people and processes are modified. An institution continues to create, manage and archive its materials. But whether it’s intellectual property, content, communications, or anything else, digital assets and electronic records help document continuity and change over time.
Many institutions focus attention towards current, near-term or ongoing projects throughout the year. With good reason! They make deliverables or deliver results. Whether assets are stored on a shared drive or on a centralized system, they gain enduring value. Assets serve a function whether they serve one or more users. You must manage information actively to manage it effectively. Greater awareness and better arrangement and description improves search and navigation.
Documenting Change and Continuity Over Time
Documenting change and continuity can be synchronic (point-in-time) or diachronic (over-time). The notion that IP exists at any point in time, and not just as a post-hoc arrangement, posits that the role of the archivist is key. S/he could exist as part of an integrated records continuum and a holistic information ecosystem approach. This model is based on authority and context control of the content. Appraisal provides authority control when focused on function or provenance (creator). Arrangement and description captures relevant metadata. This will improve physical and intellectual control. A comprehensive understanding of ownership, usage, users, and chain-of-custody rules are critical. They lay the foundation for an effective digital archiving system that provides authority, accountability, transparency, and builds trust.
Documenting change and continuity simultaneously is critical. Interpreting materials may change over time, but active and effective content management helps quantify and protect content. Cloud control analysis identifies patterns and helps set priorities related to content that can be optimized.
To learn more or to discuss your situation, contact us!
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“We put the Knowledge in Technology”
One of the most complicated elements in content management derives from the fact that each archive’s collection is different. This is due to the scale, scope, variety, and complexity of the archival collections. It also arises from the fact that there are a variety of contributing factors and specialized requirements. By leveraging our critical thinking and awareness of other successful archival systems, we put our professional knowledge into technology.
Regardless of the size and scope of a project, there are three key elements that require serious review and analysis. In fact, all archival solutions and best practice are influenced by three factors: People, Process and Technology. If you think of it like a Venn diagram, you’ll understand why we believe “Content lies at the intersection of people, process and technology.”
Content lies at the intersection of People, Process and Technology.
Professional archivists know that an awareness and understanding of archival standards helps define the deliverables and set reasonable goals. By focusing on the relevant elements and contingencies, archivists can help build a trusted digital archive that serves a variety of users and their needs. Solutions based on archival standards help connect relevant content to the specialized interests of its users.
Content Management and Archival Standards
The key component, obviously, is the content itself. As a result, it is critically important to observe people and analyze their processes carefully and non-judgmentally. Knowledge of archival standards, technical requirements and workflows make it easy to use the technology in ways that address the goals and objectives. More importantly, familiarity with other systems helps identify a Designated Community of stakeholders and super-users. This knowledge helps ensure that the technology used in the information ecosystem will deliver results that make assets accessible to the right people in the right format at the right time.
An information ecosystem is created by and dependent on its users, the software and the procedures. A clear understanding of goals and objectives allow archivists to leverage Technology, People and Processes in a way that sets up the institutional archive for success. A successful content management system is effective and efficient, and remains flexible enough for future growth and change. This creates a winning User Experience that ensures the archive is both useful and user-friendly.
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2020 Hindsight
Happy new year! With 2020 hindsight Digital Dark Ages is here! With that in mind, it’s time that we focus on learning from and leveraging the past to inform and improve the future.
Fifteen years ago, while I was in Library School, I was writing my thesis/research paper. One day in the library, I discovered an article that brought me to a complete stop. The article is titled “Titanic 2020.”
It was a scholarly article and an early and compelling warning against the “Digital Dark Age.” More importantly, it pointed out that “organizations that use IT — are generally ill prepared to prevent damage or loss of valuable electronic records or data.”
Though it’s been years since I read it, with 2020 hindsight the Digital Dark Ages still affect me profoundly. It was a Call to Action that raised such specific alarms on a variety of icebergs of technological obsolescence and format change, that I lost sleep! These icebergs, the article warned, would threaten the history and legacy of the Information Age.
As a relatively young archivist, this article had a profound effect on me. Ultimately, it force me to face a long and arduous war against obsolescence. Granted, the war has been occurring for years, but as digital archivists and librarians, we can do something constructive. And, more importantly, my colleagues and I have a responsibility to identify problems and challenges. By doing this, we can face them strategically and expeditiously. If we don’t, our historical legacy may be at risk.
Read the 2000 Titanic 2020 report here courtesy of CENSA (The Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association).
Check out some of the clients with whom we’ve worked to avoid the 2020 Titanic!
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