I attended a very stimulating, thought-provoking and exhausting event yesterday, to discuss the possible implementation of an e-information infrastructure for arts and humanities. It was organised by the Research Information Network (RIN) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). E-information infrastructures include all kinds of digital content resources and the infrastructure than underpins them.

The day was so full, and covered so much, that it is difficult to summarise. A number of projects were presented, including Research Portals in the Arts and Humanities (RePAH), Gathering Evidence: Current ICT use and Future Needs for Arts and Humanities Researchers, Peer Review of Digital Resources and Log Analysis of Internet Resources (LAIRAH).

I thought I would just list some of the key points that were made, areas that were discussed and general conclusions reached. This is not a comprehensive record of the discussion but just my impression of the points that came up:

• The arts and humanities research community is diverse heterogeneous and complex and so it is very difficult to characterise and to come up with a set of needs and wants.
• The question was raised as to whether we can really talk about an arts and humanities community at all
• Libraries and archives play a critical role but the library focus will need to extend beyond books and journals
• Institutional repositories will come to play a key role
• We are not really clear where we are at present in terms of the research landscape, let alone where we are going. There is currently no clear direction.
• We would benefit from a clear map of resources available and the various organisations that provide data, advice and support
• We do not think enough about issues of re-usability of resources
• Interoperability is of paramount importance
• Sustainability is a key issue. We do not continue to care for, update and generally make the most of many research outputs. Not enough attention is paid to the benefits of a project after the funding has finished
• Evidence of use and evidence of value are different things, and should be treated separately. We do not have enough information about either, especially evidence of value
• The gathering and analysis of evidence is key
• An e-information infrastructure must be user-driven, though it was acknowledged that users do not always know what they want or need (and cannot predict what might be available to them in the future)
• Amalgamated resources are hugely important
• Researchers will take up and use digital resources when they are readily available
• It may be that we don
  

Farewell and bon voyage to Amanda Hill, the Archives Hub’s Service Manager, who leaves the Hub today to head for Canada. We wish Manda and her family all the best.

At the recent Data Standards Group meeting of the Society of Archivists, Jon Newman from MLA London gave a talk on a current project that he is working on called Revisiting Archive Collections. This project involves recataloguing archives whilst, at the same time, increasing community awareness of and engagement with archives. The intended outcome is to add value, creating more relevant archive descriptions, whilst at the same time reaching new audiences and maybe getting archivists to think differently about approaches to cataloguing and about the audiences they are trying to reach.

Focus groups of diverse groups of people, generally unfamiliar with archives, were set up in three different London institutions. They were asked to look at and provide feedback on specially selected archives that were chosen because they might resonate with the groups, having relevance to their lives and experiences. For example, a Tanzanian women’s group was commenting on photographs and manuscripts relating to Tanzania and a group of cleaners and security staff, many of west African origin, were looking at Somalian and Nigerian material. The groups gave feedback through questionnaires, and the project is looking at adding this feedback to the archive descriptions in some way, either to the catalogue descriptions or to the index terms or as new associations or observations about the archive.

This approach does raise questions surrounding issues of reliability, authenticity, whether archivists should moderate or authenticate information provided by users, and intellectual property rights (the possibility of contributors claiming the ownership of their feedback). There are also questions about how exactly to integrate the information into the descriptions and finding aids.

The traditional view of archivists being the gatekeepers is to some extent challenged by this approach, but it surely can only be a good thing to recognise the value of expertise held within the community and work with the community to draw this out and use it to benefit others. It certainly does appear to have been very successful in providing new insights into archive materials from the perspectives of those who have a real and personal connection with the materials.

The sustainability of this type of project is uncertain. Jon Newman pointed out that the project depended on a well chosen selection of archives that were engaging and would resonate with the focus groups. It may not be practical from a funding and resource perspective to undertake this sort of project routinely, but there might be value in repositories carrying similar activities out intermittently, as this kind of approach helps to engage new audiences, provide new insights and furthermore it may change the approach that the archivist takes to thinking about, researching and cataloguing archives.

Image: Pics4Learning

An article in saturday’s Times (26/05/07) warns us about the Big Brother nature of Google:

http://tinyurl.com/ynuovl

David Rowan warns that Google holds a great deal of personal information about us, and yet this is only the beginning of its campaign to monitor our likes, dislikes and motivations. As soon as you sign up for any Google service, the data accumilation process begins. As Rowan suggested, I logged onto iGoogle (personalised Google web page) and looked at my web surfing history, which includes searches, sites and clicks. Curiously, top of the ‘movers’ which is described as ‘recent top queries related to your searches’ was ‘Crufts’. Seeing as my searches included conference venues, educational institutions and The National Archives, I found this a little surprising.

When Google started we all thought it was rather quirky and friendly and took us away from the global dominance attitude of Microsoft. Now it is becoming increasingly dominant in a way that may be rather more unhealthy. You may be happy for Google to build up a psychological profile of you, in order to make useful suggestions about what you might want to buy, to wear, to do, to think…Its not as if this approach isn’t something many of us take advantage of – I have bought items from Amazon following suggestions of ‘if you like that you might like this’. But it does seem to be important for us to be aware that this is happening and think about how confident we are that Google will guarantee to keep our information private.

It is also interesting to think about the nature of this personal data from the point of view of archiving. Google may be looking to ‘organise the world’s information’ rather than store it, but in the end it is still eagerly gathering personal information. How is this information held and what will happen to it in the future?