[Personal_archives] Welcome and some first questions for Susan

[Susan E Thomas]

On the subject of arrangement and description of hybrid archive...

Catherine pointed to two possible scenarios:

> Example:  if the fonds 
> predominantly contained textual paper records but email was 
> rarely used or the computer was used to create only drafts 
> after annotating paper copies, this would affect the 
> arrangement of the hybrid archive (i.e. the computer records 
> might form specific series or subseries) 

> rather than if the 
> creator led a fully integrated lifestyle in which case series 
> might be integrated across hard copy and paper.

I think I would tend to integrate the digital and the paper (in the
'intellectual arrangement' of the EAD catalogue) in both these
circumstances. 

The Paradigm Workbook doesn't reflect practice at the Bodleian in as
much as its rare for us to catalogue at item and piece level.
Lower-level cataloguing is more common at the Rylands, so we were able
to compare and contrast different practices during the project. It's
probably more useful for me to speak to current practice in the
arrangement and description of archives at the Bodleian, since this is
my context of operation at present. Generally, our archival arrangement
takes into consideration: 

a) the existing order of the material - does it provide evidence of
creation/use that should be preserved? Is it comprehensible/consistent?
b) anticipated uses of the collection by scholars
c) storage requirements. 

For personal archives, an arrangement along the following lines has
become quite common:

1. Diaries - sometimes split into appointment diaries and journal-style
diaries
2. Correspondence - sometimes interleaved with papers; sometimes split
into sub-series.
3. Literary papers
4. Personal papers
5. Biographical/family letters and papers 
6. Newspaper cuttings 

Within those higher-level groupings, the arrangement series/sub-series
according to provenance and date is typical. The arrangement tends to
unite digital and paper materials created through the same activities in
the same period within series/subseries, but it isn't practical to
interleave digital and paper at the item level. For instance, in the
hybrid archive of Barbara Castle we have a series of general
correspondence as follows:

- General correspondence, 1930-2002 (MSS. Castle 62-157; Castle digital
7)

The shelfmarks MSS. Castle 62-157 each represent a box of paper
correspondence, arranged in chronological order (here you see the impact
of storage on arrangement). The covering dates of the born-digital
correspondence (some 300 items) actually overlap with the paper
correspondence held in boxes MSS. Castle 145-155, but because we don't
create EAD catalogues to item level we cannot interleave the
born-digital and paper material.

Of course, we have many potential advantages with born-digital archives.
One of them is that we are able to offer multiple stored 'orders' as
well as orders configured on the fly through searching and faceting
materials. This means that we can retain the original order of the
creator (e.g. the 'disk order') AND impose an archival arrangement
within the EAD finding aid, and this is exactly what we propose to do.
Access to the born-digital archives will be via a browser-based
interface which allows the user to browse material by the user's
original order (i.e. to see which piece/s of media the file arrived on,
and what was its original filepath/s was/were), to browse by the
archival arrangement, and also to search (full text, metadata, and
facets, etc.). 

It's clear that the interface to born-digital archives will provide
enhanced access to materials at the item-level, far over and above what
we can provide for paper items. On one level, this is marvellous. On
another, we worry about the paper materials that could be missed by dint
of being less accessible. This has been a concern for a while, and we
are thinking about how we can direct our users to relevant material in
the paper element of the archive (a bit like Amazon's, 'you might want
to look at' service).

Susan




Susan Thomas
Digital Archivist/Project Manager
Bodleian Library
 
Web:  http://futurearchives.blogspot.com
Tel:    +44 (0) 1865 283821
Post: Oxford University Library Services
         Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu 
> [mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf 
> Of Hobbs, Catherine
> Sent: 16 November 2009 15:58
> To: personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Welcome and some first 
> questions for Susan
> 
> Thanks Sue,
> Two quick comments:
> 
> "In some ways I feel that politicians' archives are not 
> entirely atypical in this intermingling of personal and 
> employer materials. You can see similar issues in anyone's 
> personal archive, where organisational and personal 
> professional records start to get intertwined."  
> True.  Indeed, during the discussion had by SISPA on that 
> topic this was also felt to be the case.  
> 
> The whole concept of hybrid archives also caught my interest 
> and led me to wonder whether or not the arrangement of a 
> personal fonds might be affected by the type of hybrid 
> lifestyle of the creator.  Example:  if the fonds 
> predominantly contained textual paper records but email was 
> rarely used or the computer was used to create only drafts 
> after annotating paper copies, this would affect the 
> arrangement of the hybrid archive (i.e. the computer records 
> might form specific series or subseries) rather than if the 
> creator led a fully integrated lifestyle in which case series 
> might be integrated across hard copy and paper.  I wondered a 
> lot about the arrangement decisions made in that chapter and 
> would love some elaboration on those types of decisions as 
> demonstrated by those examples.
> 
> Catherine
>