[Personal_archives] Guidance for creators

[Hobbs, Catherine]

Wonderful comments Rodney and I heartily agree.  To my mind, it is the
choices of the individual which structure their personal archival fonds
which is why Cathy's articles are so refreshing in their emphasis on
context, memory and choice.  This structure is fluid and mutable based
on new developments and tendancies within the individual's life and how
they perceive their own needs.  
 
I think we can easily bring this back to bear on Heather's comments
about appraisal.  Reading the points that Cathy makes about the three
value indicators on page 4 of the Part 2 article, that 1) context makes
it easier to distinguish between items that are valuable and items that
have simply accumulated 2) value accretes or diminishes and 3) the
scheme relies on intrinsic metadata, I am reminded very much of an
archival appraisal visit.  I spend a lot of time trying to establish the
context of records (paper and digital), their varying values and uses
over time and looking both at the information on dates of creation and
modification available to me (which may loosely be construed as
"intrinsic metadata").  I think, as well, that many of the elements you
are asking of intrinsic metadata from systems, Cathy, are the kinds of
questions archivists are or should be asking (e.g. the differences
between various copies and the clues to the use of files).  All of
which, to my mind as an archivist, adds up to a fuller assessment of
archival provenance, particularly the interior provenance we call
"original order".  So, that begs the question how exactly are you using
the term provenance?  Is it in a narrow context of digital documents or
is it informed by archival provenance?  You are keen on retaining
relationships, for example, which can only make us cheer!
 
By the way, Rodney, there is a programme for harvesting the web at LAC.
I believe their mandate is to harvest the "Canadian web" on a periodic
basis.  We have been legally mandated to do so.  However, I don't know
how much of their focus takes in social networking sites.  ...
 
....Actually, in the middle of drafting this, I realized that the
section within Published Heritage at LAC responsible for this task is in
my floor.  Karen has explained that there are two methods by which
websites are acquired:  selection for the collection (as one would do
with books) and a web crawl method.  She is passing along some URL which
I'll forward to you.
 
Enjoying everyone's input very much....
Catherine
 

________________________________

From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu
[mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Rodney
Carter
Sent: April 29, 2009 10:05 PM
To: personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Guidance for creators


[note: Cathy's reply to Yvette came in after I started writing this
response so some of what follows echoes what is said in the reply. I
decided to finish the email, hopefully picking up on, and not just
repeating, some of what Cathy wrote]

As much as I agree with Yvette that de-centralized storage makes the
archivists life less easy (when is life ever easy? and my apologies if I
am taking liberties with what you meant, Yvette) I would suggest that
the very fact that people choose to put a file in one location rather
than another is very significant. 

Just as three photographs printed from the same negative have different
meaning when placed in a shoebox, placed in a scrapbook and framed and
hung on an art gallery walls, a digital photograph that is printed and
placed in a shoebox, placed on flickr, used as an avatar on lavalife,
appearing on my wall in facebook, showing up as my desktop image on my
home computer, modified in photoshop and used in my christmas cards,
etc. etc. all have different meanings. Or, even if we only consider
storage possibilities, and not even entertain the diffuse uses, the
files that are selected as worthy of being stored online, of being
emailed to oneself, or being copied to cd/dvd/usb drive are being
selected as worthy of some special consideration. [this reflects the
social choices Cathy describes]

The use affects the record's meaning, that intrinsic metadata, which,
after more thought on what that might entail, could really be the
archival bread & butter: the context of the digital object as it is
moved, copied, modified and used in a seemingly endless array of
possibilities. It is not just the bits & bytes that reflect the person's
life but how they are used in the world.

More than not creating the one right tool (for storage) there are too
many "right tools" for so many different jobs and it would be limiting
to look solely at a singular digital artifact, placed on a centralized
space without any sense of its history.

At the end of the ACA session at last year's conference I mentioned that
I thought the Library & Archives should, as the only institution
empowered to do so under the current legislation, crawl the internet for
content created by Canadians. I envision them capturing not a limited
sample but ALL content stemming from a Canadian IP address, including
blogs, youtube videos, photos on flickr, etc. as well as saving
business, personal and institutional websites. With my limited technical
understanding, I see no reason why this wouldn't be currently feasible.
Of course, there are a multitude of moral rights which would have to be
dealt with in this scenario, but in terms of capturing Canadian's
records creation, we theoretically have the capability to document the
Canadian experience at an unprecedented scale. And, if the LAC does not
act, the potential of losing it all is very real. 

Perhaps this is fanciful, impossible, or just plain undesirable but it
could be one way of dealing with the issues of the dispersal of data
across the online environment - capture the cloud regularly and get a
sense of its shape, what it is made up of, how it shifts, and how it
evolves.

Rodney


On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Hackett, Yvette
<yvette.hackett at lac-bac.gc.ca> wrote:


	Hi everybody,


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