[Personal_archives] Guidance for creators

[home at queensu.ca]

I whole-heartedly agree with Rod’s comments about context and decentralized storage of the digital belongings. The research value of where the material lives, and how it lives in that environment, is of great importance to us as archivists and also to future researchers. That said, I also understand the fear of decentralized storage leading to loss and fragmentary glimpses in the future, because once it is decentralized, as archivists, how are we to know where the borders and boundaries of the fonds, or the whole (of what remains), lies. 
 
My technical question is slightly different than Rodney’s and maybe incorporates centralized and decentralized notions. What I wonder is if it is possible to have a centralized map of an individual’s path and interaction with their own digital belongings and other electronic information. Cathy, I know you have written about encountered information in other articles, but is it possible to include in that idea a person’s encounter with their “own” information? I don’t see the centralized map as containing the information, but reflecting the how, when, where of a person’s interaction with material – which ultimately may assist with appraisal and selection. Sort of a cross between Mac’s Time Machine and a browser history on speed! Is there anything out there that does this sort of thing – is there a way we could./should be doing some of this type of thing when we are talking with (living) donors?

Heather


----- Original Message -----
From: "Hobbs, Catherine" <catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca>
Date: Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:03 am
Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Guidance for creators
To: personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu

> 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 
> RodneyCarter
> 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 
> differentmeaning 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'slife 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 
> technicalunderstanding, 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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