WikiLinks

September 24, 2014 / Jane Stevenson

WikiLinks – Guest Blog by Andy Young

Between March and June 2014 I conducted a piece of social media-oriented research on behalf of the Archives Hub, the primary purpose of which was to measure the impact of adding links from specific Wikipedia articles featuring Hub content on the traffic that comes into the Hub website. As well as providing the Hub administrators – and, indeed, the profession as a whole – with a gauge as to whether the amount of time invested in creating links is worthwhile when compared to the benefits of impact, this research benefitted me personally in that it allowed me the opportunity to potentially earn credits on the Archives & Records Association’s Registration Scheme, under the ‘Contributions to the profession’ category.

The first phase of the study involved me identifying twenty archival collections listed in the Hub, with no existing links to related Wikipedia pages, which I could treat as measurable research subjects. This was done simply by entering specific Hub collection level descriptions into the Wikipedia search engine. (If a link to the Hub had already been created, I eliminated that particular collection from the study.) In order to achieve a fair and balanced piece of research, I selected collections of a relatively similar size and status, and avoided those relating to any significant public events running concurrent to, or immediately prior to, the commencement of the research, i.e. local elections in England, the World Cup. My feeling was that such collections could have been subject to closer scrutiny from researchers while the study was underway, which, in turn, would have resulted in an unexpected increase in Hub-searching activity. This, in essence, would have undermined the credibility of the study. I also made sure that the Wikipedia pages I utilised didn’t already include links to the collection-holding repositories, as this could potentially sway researchers away from clicking the newly-created links to the Hub descriptions, thereby affecting the accuracy of research.

The twenty collections selected, along with their corresponding Wikipedia links, are shown in the table below.

table showing list of Hub collections with wikipedia links — List of Collections used in the study with the Wikipedia URLs

Once the Hub collections and related Wikipedia pages had been identified, I then added new links to the individual pages using Wikipedia’s built-in editing tool. In the interests of consistency, I embedded each new link in the ‘External Links’ section on each of the pages I modified. I then used Google Analytics, in conjunction with an Excel spreadsheet, to collate and record Hub traffic data for each individual collection for the twelve-week period prior to the start of the study, specifically from the 22nd December, 2013 to the 15^th March, 2014. This was done in order to enable me to generate a measurement of the overall impact of the newly-created links on incoming Hub traffic. The cumulative results for each collection, for the twelve-week period prior to the commencement of the study, are shown below.

table showing page views for collections prior to wikipedia links — Page views for collections in a 12 week period prior to the creation of the Wikipedia links

Over the course of the next twelve weeks, from the 17^th March, 2014 to the 7^th June, 2014, I used Google Analytics once again to monitor incoming Hub traffic, with a reading being taken at the end of every fourth week in order to identify any significant traffic fluctuations or changes. The four-week hit statistics for each of the twenty collections are shown in the table below.

table showing hits for hub collections when the links were on wikipedia — Hits for Hub collections during the Wikipedia study

At the end of the twelve-week research period it was evident from the accumulated data that fourteen of the twenty collections had each experienced an increase in traffic compared to the previous twelve-week period. Indeed, of the fourteen, two collections, namely the Ramsay MacDonald Papers and the London South Bank University Archives, had each received well in excess of 100 additional hits compared to the pre-link period. Of the remaining six collections, only the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Archive had decreased in hits significantly, down 109 from the previous period. Although it isn’t possible to say definitively why this decrease occurred, it may have been due to the fact that at some point during the research, a new link had been added to the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Archive Wikipedia page giving researchers the option to examine ‘Archival material relating to Sadler’s Wells Theatre listed at the UK National Archives.’ Taking this modification into account, it seems fair to suggest that any researchers interested in the Sadler’s Wells Theatre material may have been drawn to this link description rather than the newly-added link to the Hub description essentially because it makes mention of the country’s principal archival repository, TNA.

The cumulative number of hits for each of the twenty collections during the research period are presented in the table below. This table also shows the positive and negative numerical differences in hits for each of the collections compared to the twelve-week period prior to the start of the research.

table showing cumulative hits for collections with positive and negative changes shown — Cumulative hits for collections with positive and negative differences shown

Conclusion

This piece of research has demonstrated that the simple task of linking online archival descriptions to a popular social media reference tool such as Wikipedia can yield extremely positive results. It has shown, moreover, that there are clear benefits, both for the archival repository/aggregator and the individual researcher, when catalogue data is linked and shared. Not only that, it has proven that a successful outcome can be achieved in a relatively short space of time, and, truth be told, with only a small amount of physical effort. The process of checking whether links from specific Hub collections already existed in Wikipedia and then adding them to the website if they didn’t, took little more than three hours to complete, and, for the most part, basically involved me copying data from one website and pasting it onto another. Ultimately, the sheer simplicity of this exercise, coupled with the knowledge that interest in the vast majority of the Hub collections increased as a result of the Wikipedia editing, confirms, to my mind at least, that archive services the world over – especially those blessed with a healthy number of volunteers – would benefit from embarking on linked data projects of this nature. After all, it’s like Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

Supporting Historians: responding to changing research practices

February 25, 2013 / Jane Stevenson

This post picks out some highlights from a report from Ithaka S+R, “Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians” by Roger C Schonfeld and Jennifer Rutner (December 2012). It concentrates on findings that are of particular relevance for archivists and for discovery. The report is recommended reading. It is a US study, but clearly there are strong similarities with other countries.

The report finds that underlying research methods are still broadly as they were but practices have changed considerably: “Based on interviews with dozens of historians, librarians, archivists, and other support services providers, this project has found that the underlying research methods of many historians remain fairly recognizable even with the introduction of new tools and technologies, but the day to day research practices of all historians have changed fundamentally.”

It goes on to summarise the improvements that archives might make to meet changing needs, none of which are unexpected: “For archives, we recommend ongoing improvements to access through improved finding aids, digitization, and discovery tool integration, as well as expanded opportunities for archivists to help historians interpret collections, to build connections among users, and to instruct PhD students in the use of archives.”

It is very encouraging to see the positive comments about researchers’ interactions with archivists: “Having a meeting with the archivist and librarian is really fantastic, because they help you understand what is in the archive, and what you might be able to use.” It is clear from the study that archivists have a vital role to play as key collaborators and colleagues of historians, and their value is clear: “Archivists are often able  to hone and direct an inquiry, bringing to light items and collections that the researcher may have been unaware of.”

The study does highlight the changing nature of interactions with archival material, as a result of the use of digital cameras in particular, which enables the analytical work to take place elsewhere. It is generally felt to be a convenient and time-saving option, enabling long-term interaction with resources outside of the reading room. This development is actually described as “the single most significant shift in research practices among historians.” It raises questions about whether the role of the archivist changes when the analytical work is displaced from the archive, as archivists may have less opportunity for intellectual engagement with researchers. The study does highlight a possible issue with digital copies, namely the separation of metadata from content, where the researcher has hundreds of images and needs to organise them constructively, and it also found that scholars are struggling to work with digitised non-textual content effectively.

The ability to find time for research trips was a primary challenge for many researchers. “Interviewees repeatedly emphasized that the amount of time they are able to spend in the archives shapes the nature of the interaction with the sources significantly.” Because most struggle to find time for research trips, digitised sources are hugely beneficial.

The study found that digitised finding aids help researchers to “travel more strategically”. It suggests that high-quality finding aids may become more important as researchers move more towards photographic visits to archives, rather than serendipitous visits. This connection is something I have not thought about before, and I would be very interested to hear what archivists think about this idea.

Of major relevance for a service like the Archives Hub is the conclusion about finding aids:

“The use of online finding aids greatly facilitates, and sometimes displaces, these visits. If a “good” finding aid is readily available online, this might make a scouting visit unnecessary, depending on the importance of the archive to the research project. In some cases, researchers were able to rule out a visit to an archive based on the online finding aids, and re-purpose funds and effort to tracking down other sources for the project.”

This study is a clear endorsement for our belief (which, I should say, is also backed up by our own researcher surveys) that finding aids play a role not only in identifying and prioritising sources, but also in providing enough information in themselves to make a visit unnecessary. As well as this, they may have a kind of positive negative effect: the researcher knows that materials can be ruled out. The study strongly emphasised the need for “searchable databases” and “centralized searching” and participants talked about the problem with locating each collection independently, especially across the diverse types of archive repository: “The process of identifying archives – in some cases small, local archives or international archives – can present an amazing challenge to researchers.” Clearly comprehensive cross-searching search tools are a huge boon to researchers.

In terms of discovery, Google is clearly a major tool and there was a feeling that it was the most comprehensive discovery tool, as well as being convenient and easy to use. It is often used at the start of a searching process.: “Generally, historians discover finding aids through Google searches and archive websites.” There is a clear demand for more descriptions online: “The general consensus among interviewees was that more online finding aids would greatly benefit their research, and that archives should continue to make efforts to make these accessible online. Continued and expanded efforts to develop finding aids more efficiently and to make them available digitally would seem to support the needs of historians for improved access.”

In terms of PhD students (and maybe others who are inexperienced researchers), the study found issues with the use of archives and other sources:

“Interviews with PhD candidates indicated that there is often little support for them in learning about new research methods or practices, either in their department or elsewhere at their institution, of which they are aware. While the subject matter treated by historians continues to diversify dramatically, new methodologies develop, and research practices change rapidly, it is clearly critically important that students have a grounding in the methods and practices of the field.” The Archives Hub has recently produced a brief Guide to Using Archives for the Inexperienced, and discussions on the archives email list showed just how much this is an important topic for archivists and how there was a general consensus that PhD students need more training on research methodologies.

Summing up, the report makes six recommendations specifically for Archives:

1. More online finding aids
2. More digitisation
3. Discovery tools that promote cross-searching, crossing institutional boundaries and encompassing small and local record offices
4. Adequate resources for ensuring the expertise of the archivist continues to be available, enabling archivists to be active interpreters of the collections
5. Adapting to and facilitating the use of digital cameras and scanners in reading rooms
6. Training PhD students in the use of archives

There is a great deal more of interest and relevance in the report around searching, Google Scholar, the use of the academic library, organising and managing research, citation management and digital research methods. It is very well worth reading.

The modern archivist: working with people and technology

July 7, 2012 / Jane Stevenson / 5 Comments

I’ve recently read Kate Theimer’s very excellent post on Honest Tips for Wannabe Archivists Out There.

This is something that I’ve thought about quite a bit, as I work as the manager of an online service for Archives and I do training and teaching for archivists and archive students around creating online descriptions. I would like to direct this blog post to archive students or those considering becoming archivists. I think this applies equally to records managers, although sometimes they have a more defined role in terms of audience, so the perspective may be somewhat different.

It’s fine if you have ‘a love of history’, if you ‘feel a thrill when handling old documents’. That’s a good start. I’ve heard this kind of thing frequently as a motivation for becoming an archivist. But this is not enough. It is more important to have the desire to make those archives available to others; to provide a service for researchers. To become an archivist is to become a service provider, not an historian. It may not sound as romantic, but as far as I am concerned it is what we are, and we should be proud of the service we provide, which is extremely valuable to society. Understanding how researchers might use the archives is, of course, very important, so that you can help to support them in their work. Love of the materials, and love of the subject (especially in a specialist repository) should certainly help you with this core role. Indeed, you will build an understanding of your collections, and become more expert in them over time, which is one of the wonderful things about being an archivist.

Your core role is to make archives available to the community – for many of us, the community is potentially anyone, for some of us it may be more restricted in scope. So, you have an interest in the materials, you need to make them available. To do this you need to understand the vital importance of cataloguing. It is this that gives people a way in to the archives. Cataloguing is a real skill, not something to be dismissed as simply creating a list of what you have. It is something to really work on and think about. I have seen enough inconsistent catalogues over the last ten years to tell you that being rigorous, systematic and standards-based in cataloguing is incredibly important, and technology is our friend in this aim. Furthermore, the whole notion of ‘cataloguing’ is changing, a change led by the opportunities of the modern digital age and the perspectives and requirements of those who use technology in their every day life and work. We need to be aware of this, willing (even excited!) to embrace what this means for our profession and ready to adapt.

This brings me to the subject I am particularly interested in: the use of technology. Cataloguing *is* using technology, and dissemination *is* using technology. That is, it should be and it needs to be if you want to make an impact; if you want to effectively disseminate your descriptions and increase your audience. It is simply no good to see this profession as in any way apart from technology. I would say that technology is more central to being an archivist than to many professions, because we *deal in information*. It may be that you can find a position where you can keep technology at arm’s length, but these types of positions will become few and far between. How can you be someone who works professionally with information, and not be prepared to embrace the information environment? The Web, email, social networks, databases: these are what we need to use to do our jobs. We generally have limited resources, and technology can both help us make the most of the resources we have and, conversely, we may need to make informed choices about the technology we use and what sort of impact it will have. Should you use Flickr to disseminate content? What are the pros and cons? Is ‘augmented reality’ a reality for us? Should you be looking at Linked Data? What is is and why might it be important? What about Big Data? It may sound like the latest buzz phrase but it’s big business, and can potentially save time and money. Is your system fit for purpose? Does it create effective online catalogues? How interoperable is it? How adaptable?

Before I give the impression that you need to become some sort of technical whizz-kid, I should make clear that I am not talking about being an out-and-out techie – a software developer or programmer. I am talking about an understanding of technology and how to use it effectively. I am also talking about the ability to talk to technical colleagues in order to achieve this. Furthermore, I am talking about a willingness to embrace what technology offers and not be scared to try things out. It’s not always easy. Technology is fast-moving and sometimes bewildering. But it has to be seen as our ally, as something that can help us to bring archives to the public and to promote a greater understanding of what we do. We use it to catalogue, and I have written previously about how our choice of system has a great impact on our catalogues, and how important it is to be aware of this.

Our role in using technology is really *all about people*. I often think of myself as the middleman, between the technology (the developers) and the audience. My role is to understand technology well enough to work with it, and work with experts, to harness it in order to constantly evolve and use it to best advantage, but also to constantly communicate with archivists and with researchers. To have an understanding of requirements and make sure that we are relevant to end-users. Its a role, therefore, that is about working with people. For most archivists, this role will be within a record office or repository, but either way, working with people is the other side of the coin to working with technology. They are both central to the world of archives.

If you wonder how you can possibly think about everything that technology has to offer: well, you can’t. But that’s why it is even more vital now than it has ever been to think of yourself as being in a collaborative profession. You need to take advantage of the experience and knowledge of colleagues, both within the archives profession and further afield. It’s no good sitting in a bubble at your repository. We need to talk to each other and benefit from sharing our understanding. We need to be outgoing. If you are an introvert, if you are a little shy and quiet, that’s not a problem; but you may have to make a little more effort to engage and to reach out and be an active part of your profession.

They say ‘never work with children and animals’ in show business because both are unpredictable; but in our profession we should be aware that working with people and technology is our bread and butter. Understanding how to catalogue archives to make them available online, to use social networks to communicate our messages, to think about systems that will best meet the needs of archives management, to assess new technologies and tools that may help us in our work. These are vital to the role of a modern professional archivist.

HubbuB: November 2011

November 4, 2011 / Jane Stevenson

I don’t think we made much of a fuss about reaching 200 contributors, but we’re really pleased to say that we’re now into the 200’s and new contributors are coming on board regularly, which makes the Hub even more useful to even more researchers.

We’re currently trying out a bit of a whizzy thing with the contributors’ map – go to http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributorsmap/ and try a few clicks and you’ll see what I mean. We particularly like the jump from Aberdeen to Exeter, and are looking for archives from further afield in order to execute even bigger jumps!

Speaking of contributors, we’ve made a few changes to our contributor pages. We now have a link to browse each contributor’s descriptions, and also a link to simply show the list of collections. This link was largely introduced to help us with our quest to bring the Hub out loud and strong through Google. We’re doing pretty well on that front….we’ve found that page views have gone up radically over the last few months, and that can only be good for archives. I think the list of descriptions can really look quite impressive – I tried Aberdeen and found collections from ‘favourite tunes’ to ‘a valuation of the Shire of Aberdeen’.

We’ve been busy on our new Linking Lives project, using Linked Data to create a Web front-end, and making the data available via an open licence. We’re really pleased that the vast majority of contributors have not asked us to exclude their descriptions, and many have emailed specifically to endorse what we are doing. This is brilliant news, and I think it shows that most archivists are actually forward-thinking and understand that technology can really benefit our domain (flattery will get you everywhere!). We want to ensure that archives are out there in the Web of Data, and part of the innovative work that is happening now. You may have seen a few blog posts to get going on Linking Lives: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/linkinglives/. Pete’s are rather more technical than mine, and brilliantly set out some of the difficult issues. I’m trying to think about what archivists are interested in and how we think about archival context. I hope our posts on licensing convey how much we are thinking about the best way to present and attribute the content.

Lastly for this month’s HubbuB, I’ve knocked up a fairly short Feature on the latest stuff that’s happening. I’m thinking of this as an annual feature – sometimes we are so busy we kind of forget to actually make a bit of noise about what we’ve achieved. You’ll see that we’re working on some record display improvements. I really hope I can show you these soon.

Features

September 22, 2011 / Lisa

© National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield

The Archives Hub has been writing/having collections of the month or features since 2001. In that time we’ve had a large variety of features on everything from ornithology to poetry to the Miners’ Strike and even Rugby League.

Our features highlight what treasures there are to be found in archive collections that are on the Hub. Sometimes the feature can be on a specific topic or theme collecting resources together from different repositories or they can highlight a specific repository.

This year we have changed the format of our features to include print resources from our sister service, Copac and there are now links from the Copac home page to the feature.

All of our web pages include Google analytics and we can see that our features are popular. Our feature pages have been viewed by nearly 9000 people since 1 January 2011 and most viewed feature this year has been our feature: Scrum, ruck and tackle: the Rugby Football League Archive at the University of Huddersfield. Having your collections featured on the Hub also increases the amount of traffic you’ll get to your descriptions through Google.

Although the Hub team has been known to write a feature or two, we much prefer it if our contributors write the features, after all, they are the experts on their collections. This year has been a bumper year for features, with features from the University of Huddersfield, Imperial War Museum, the Women’s Library and the National Fairground Archive to name but a few. We have features scheduled now for the rest of 2011 and even have a couple of months booked up in 2012.

We like to be as flexible as possible when it comes to our features and offer to help as much or as little as the contributor wants. As a contributor, you can simply write the text of the feature and provide images, or you can suggest related collections, websites and reading lists as well. It’s entirely up to you.

Should you wish to feature on the Archives Hub, please contact archiveshub@mimas.ac.uk. We operate on a first come first served basis, so if you have an event, exhibition or project launch coming up and you would like your feature to coincide with it, let us know as early as possible.

Huddersfield Giants’ Match © Image courtesy of the Rugby Football League and The University of Huddersfield Archive and Special Collections

Locah Linking Lives: an introduction

August 31, 2011 / Jane Stevenson

We are very pleased to announce that the Archives Hub will be working on a new Linked Data project over the next 11 months, following on from our first phase of Locah, and called Linking Lives. We’d like to introduce this with a brief overview of the benefits of the Linked Data approach, and an outline of what the project is looking to achieve. For more in-depth discussion of Linked Data, please see our Locah project blog, or take a look at the Linked Data website guides and tutorials.

Linked Open Data Cloud — Linked Data Cloud

The benefits of Linked Data

The W3C currently has a draft of a report, ‘Library Linked Data‘, which covers archives and museums. In this they state that:

‘Linked data is shareable, extensible, and easily re-usable… These characteristics are inherent in the linked data standards and are supported by the use of web-friendly identifiers for data and concepts.’

Shareable

One of the exciting things about Linked Data is that it is about sharing data (certainly where you have Linked Open Data). I have found that this emphasis on sharing and data integration has actually had a positive effect aside from the practical reality of sharing; it engenders a mindset of collaboration and sharing, something that is of great value not just in the pursuit of the Linked Data vision, but also, more broadly, for any kind of collaborative effort and for encouraging a supportive environment. Our previous Linked Data project, Locah, has been great for forging contacts and for putting archival data within this exciting space where people are talking about the future of the Web and the sorts of things that we might be able to do if we work together.

For the Archives Hub, our aim is to share the descriptions of archive collections as a means to raise the profile of archives, and show just how relevant archives are across numerous disciplines and for numerous purposes. In many ways, sharing the data gives us an opportunity to get away from the idea that archives are only of interest to a narrow group of people (i.e. family historians and academics purely within the History Faculty).

Extensible

The principle of allowing for future growth and development seems to me to be vital. The idea is to ensure that we can take a flexible approach, whereby enhancements can be made over time. This is vital for an exploratory area like Linked Data, where an iterative approach to development is the best way to go, and where we are looking at presenting data in new ways, looking to respond to user needs, and working with what technology offers.

Reusable

‘Reuse’ has become a real buzz word, and is seen as synonymous with efficiency and flexibility. In this context it is about using data in different contexts, for different purposes. In a Linked Data environment what this can mean is providing the means for people to combine data from different sources to create something new, something that answers a certain need. To many archivists this will be fine, but some may question the implications in terms of whether the provenance of the data is lost and what this might mean. What about if information from an archive description is combined with information from Wikipedia? Does this have any implications for the idea of archive repositories being trusted and does it mean that pieces of the information will be out of their original context and therefore in some way open to misuse or misinterpretation?

Reuse may throw up issues, but it provides a great deal more benefits than risks. Whatever the caveats, it is an inevitable consequence of open data combined with technology, so archives either join in or exclude themselves from this type of free-flow of data. Nevertheless, it is certainly worth thinking about the issues involved in providing data within different contexts, and our project will consider issues around provenance.

Linking Lives

The basic idea of the Linking Lives project is to develop a new Web interface that presents useful resources relating to individual people, and potentially organisations as well.

It is about more than just looking at a name-based approach for archives. It is also about utilising external datasets in order to bring archives together with other data sources. Researchers are often interested in individual people or organisations, and will want to know what sort of resources are out there. They may not just be interested in archives. Indeed, they may not really have thought about using archives, but they may be very interested in biographical information, known connections, events during a person’s lifetime, etc. The idea is to show that various sources exist, including archives, and thus to work towards broadening the user-base of archives.

Our interface will bring different data sources together and we will link to all the archival collections relating to an individual. We have many ideas about what we can do, but with limited time and resources, we will have to prioritise, test out various options and see what works and what doesn’t and what each option requires to implement. We’ll be updating you via the blog, and we are very interested in any thoughts that you have about the work, so please do leave comments, or contact us directly.

In some ways, our approach may be an alternative to using EAC-CPF (Encoded Archvial Content for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families, an XML standard for marking up names associated with archive collections). But maybe in essence it will compliment EAC-CPF, because eventually we could use EAC authority records and create Linked Data from them. We have followed the SNAC project with interest, and we recently met up with some of the SNAC project members at the Society of American Archivists’ Conference. We hope to take advantage of some of the exciting work that they are doing to match and normalise name records.

The W3C draft report on Library Linked Data states that ‘through rich linkages with complementary data from trusted sources, libraries [and archives] can increase the value of their own data beyond the sum of its sources taken individually’. This is one of the main principles that we would like to explore. By providing an interface that is designed for researchers, we will be able to test out the benefits of the Linked Data approach in a much more realistic way.

Maybe we are at a bit of a crossroads with Linked Data. A large number of data sets have been put out as XML RDF, and some great work has been done by people like the BBC (e.g. the Wildlife Finder), the University of Southampton and the various JISC-funded projects. We have data.gov.uk, making Government data sets much more open. But there is still a need to make a convincing argument that Linked Data really will provide concrete benefits to the end user. Talking about Sparql endpoints, JSON, Turtle, Triples that connect entities and the benefits of persistent URIs won’t convince people who are not really interested in process and principles, but just want to see the benefits for themselves.

Has there been too much emphasis on the idea that if we output Linked Data then other people can (will) build tools? The much quoted adage is ‘The best thing that will be done with your data will be done by someone else’, but is there a risk in relying on this idea? In order to get buy-in to Linked Data, we need visible, concrete examples of benefit. Yes, people can build tools, they can combine data for their own purposes, and that’s great if and when it happens; but for a community like the archives community the problem may be that this won’t happen very rapidly, or on the sort of scale that we need to prove the worth of the investment in Linked Data. Maybe we are going to have to come up with some exemplars that show the sorts of benefits that end users can get. We hope that Linking Lives will be one step along this road; not so much an exemplar as a practical addition to the Archives Hub service that researchers will immediately be able to benefit from.

Of course, there has already been very good work within the library, archive and museum communities, and readers of this blog may be interested in the Use Cases that are provided at http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/UseCaseReport

Just to finish with a quote from the W3C draft report (I’ve taken the liberty of adding ‘archives’ as I think they can readily be substituted):

“Linked Data reaches a diverse community far broader than the library/archive community; moving to library/archival Linked Data requires libraries/archives to understand and interact with the entire information community. Much of this information community has been engendered by the capabilities provided by new technologies. The library/archive community has not fully engaged with these new information communities, yet the success of Linked Data will require libraries/archives to interact with them as fully as they interact with other libraries/archives today. This will be a huge cultural change that must be addressed.”

Flickr: Icono SVDs photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/28860201@N05/with/3674610629/

HubbuB: August 2011

August 4, 2011 / Jane Stevenson

We are out and About in August. Jane and Joy will be going to the Society of American Archivists’ Conference this year, speaking as part of a panel session. We will be talking about Discovery, the Archives Hub and Linked Data. We’re also very excited to be visiting the OCLC offices in Dublin Ohio. Lisa and Bethan will be at the Archives and Records Association conference in Edinburgh, so go and say hello if you are there. Lisa is also speaking at the conference.

Our Monthly Feature is all levitating women and mustacheod men, as we take a trip into Magic and Illusion at the Fairground Archive: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/magic/. Some great images, and a lovely photograph of Cyril Critchlow, a wizard in his 80’s, performing as ‘Wizardo, Harry Potter’s grandfather’!

We’ve recently created a page of Top Tips for Cataloguing: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/cataloguingtips/. These are some of the key areas that we believe are important for good online catalogues. We do still find that archivists don’t always think about the global online environment, so it’s worth setting out some of the most important points to bear in mind. It’s partly about thinking of the audience, browsing the Web, using Google, scanning pages for relevant content, and it’s partly about descriptions – ensuring that the title is as clear and self-explanatory as possible, thinking about how best to describe the archive in a way that is user-friendly.

We’ve been talking about ways to help get descriptions onto the Hub when they are created in Microsoft Word or Excel. We’re just exploring possibilities at the moment, but we are interested in anyone who uses, or knows anyone who uses, Microsoft Word to catalogue. Maybe smaller offices, or maybe you ask volunteers to do some of this?

We know people do use Microsoft Excel as well. We are thinking about ‘Tips for using Excel’. Would this be useful? We don’t necessarily want to give the impression that Excel is the most appropriate choice for cataloguing – its a spreadsheet software, not really for complex hierarchical archives. But we do realise that for some people, the choice of what to use is limited, and we want to do our best to accommodate the realities that people are faced with.

We’ve had some interest in the idea of researchers being able to request digital copies of archives through the Hub. That is, a researcher comes across an archive they would like to see, and they would like digital copies, so they indicate this in some way. Not yet fully thought out, but again, we’d need to know if there is a need for this. How many officers are starting to digitise on demand?

Finally, we’re covering music, dance, plants, medicine and the Middle East with our latest contributors. Check out who is recently on board on our contributors’ page:
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/

A Web of Possibilities

July 28, 2011 / Jane Stevenson

“Will you browse around my website”, said the spider to the fly,
‘Tis the most attractive website that you ever did spy”

All of us want to provide attractive websites for our users. Of course, we’d like to think its not really the spider/fly kind of relationship! But we want to entice and draw people in and often we will see our own website as our key web presence; a place for people to come to to find out about who we are, what we have and what we do and to look at our wares, so to speak.

The recently released ‘Discovery’ vision is to provide UK researchers with “easy, flexible and ongoing access to content and services through a collaborative, aggregated and integrated resource discovery and delivery framework which is comprehensive, open and sustainable.” Does this have any implications for the institutional or small-scale website, usually designed to provide access to the archives (or descriptions of archives) held at one particular location?

Over the years that I’ve been working in archives, announcements about new websites for searching the archives of a specific institution, or the outputs of a specific project have been commonplace. A website is one of the obvious outputs from time-bound projects, where the aim is often to catalogue, digitise or exhibit certain groups of archives held in particular repositories. These websites are often great sources of in-depth information about archives. Institutional websites are particularly useful when a researcher really wants to gain a detailed understanding of what a particular repository holds.

However, such sites can present a view that is based more around the provider of the information rather than the receiver. It could be argued that a researcher is less likely to want to use the archives because they are held at a particular location, apart from for reasons of convenience, and more likely to want archives around their subject area, and it is likely that the archives which are relevant to them will be held in a whole range of archives, museums and libraries (and elsewhere). By only looking at the archives held at a particular location, even if that location is a specialist repository that represents the researcher’s key subject area, the researcher may not think about what they might be missing.

Project-based websites may group together archives in ways that benefit researchers more obviously, because they are often aggregating around a specific subject area. For example, making available the descriptions and links to digital archives around a research topic. Value may be added through rich metadata, community engagement and functionality aimed at a particular audience. Sometimes the downside here is the sustainability angle: projects necessarily have a limited life-span, and archives do not. They are ever-changing and growing and descriptions need to be updated all the time.

So, what is the answer? Is this too much of a silo-type approach, creating a large number of websites, each dedicated to a small selection of archives?

Broader aggregation seems like one obvious answer. It allows for descriptions of archives (or other resources) to be brought together so that researchers have the benefit of searching across collections, bringing together archives by subject, place, person or event, regardless of where they are held (although there is going to be some kind of limit here, even if it is at the national level).

You might say that the Archives Hub is likely to be in favour of aggregation! But it’s definitely not all pros and no cons. Aggregations may offer a powerful search functionality for intellectually bringing together archives based on a researcher’s interests, but in some ways there is a greater risk around what is omitted. When searching a website that represents one repository, a researcher is more likely to understand that other archives may exist that are relevant to them. Aggregations tend to promote themselves as comprehensive – if not explicitly then implicitly – which this creates expectation that cannot ever fully be met. They can also raise issues around measuring impact and around licensing. There is also the risk of a proliferation of aggregation services, further confusing the resource discovery landscape.

Is the ideal of broad inter-disciplinary cross-searching going to be impeded if we compete to create different aggregations? Yes, maybe it will be to some extent, but I think that it is an inevitability, and it is valid for different gateways to service different audiences’ needs. It is important to acknowledge that researchers in different disciplines and at different levels have their own needs, their own specific requirements, and we cannot fulfill all of these needs by only presenting data in one way.

One thing I think is critical here is for all archive repositories to think about the benefits of employing recognised and widely-used standards, so that they can effectively interoperate and so that the data remains relevant and sustainable over time. This is the key to ensuring that data is agile, and can meet different needs by being used in different systems and contexts.

I do wonder if maybe there is a point at which aggregations become unwieldy, politically complicated and technically challenging. That point seems to be when they start to search across countries. I am still unsure about whether Europeana can overcome this kind of problem, although I can see why many people are so keen on making it work. But at present, it is extremely patchy, and , for example, getting no results for texts held in Britain relating to Shakespeare is not really a good result. But then, maybe the point is that Europeana is there for those that want to use it, and it is doing ground-breaking work in its focus on European culture; the Archives Hub exists for those interested in UK Archives and a more cross-disciplinary approach; Genesis exists for those interested in womens studies; for those interested in the Co-operative movement, there is the National Co-operative Archive site; for those researching film, the British Film Institute website and archive is of enormous value.

So, is the important principle here that diversity is good because people are diverse and have diverse needs? Probably so. But at the same time, we need to remember that to get this landscape, we need to encourage data sharing and avoid duplication of effort. Once you have created descriptions of your archive collections you should be able to put them onto your own website, contribute them to a project website, and provide them to an aggregator.

Ideally, we would be looking at one single store of descriptions, because as soon as you contribute to different systems, if they also store the data, you have version control issues. The ability to remotely search different data sources would seem to be the right solution here. However, there are substantial challenges. The Archives Hub has been designed to work in a distributed way, so that institutions can host their own data. The distributed searching does present challenges, but it certainly works pretty well. The problem is that running a server, operating system and software can actually be a challenge for institutions that do not have the requisite IT skills dedicated to the archives department. Institutions that hold their own data have it in a great variety of formats. So, what we really need is the ability for the Archives Hub to seamlessly search CALM, AdLib, MODES, ICA AtoM, Access, Excel, Word, etc. and bring back meaningful results. Hmmm….

The business case for opening up data seems clear. Project like Open Bibliographic Data have helped progress the thinking in this arena and raised issues and solutions around barriers such as licensing. But it seems clear that we need to understand more about the benefits of aggregation, and the different approaches to aggregation, and we need to get more buy-in for this kind of approach. Does aggregation allow users to do things that they could not do otherwise? Does it save them time? Does it promote innovation? Does it skew the landscape? Does it create problems for institutions because of the problems with branding and measuring impact? Furthermore, how can we actually measure these kinds of potential benefits and issues?

Websites that offer access to archives (or descriptions of archives) based on where they are located and based on they body that administers them have an important role to play. But it seems to me that it is vital that these archives are also represented on a more national, and even international stage. We need to bring our collections to where the users are. We need to ensure that Google and other search engines find our descriptions. We need to put archives at the heart of research, alongside other resources.

I remember once talking about the Archives Hub to an archivist who ran a specialist repository. She said that she didn’t think it was worth contributing to the Hub because they already had their own catalogue. That is, researchers could find what they wanted via the institute’s own catalogue on their own system, available in their reading room. She didn’t seem to be aware that this could only happen if they knew that the archive was there, and that this view rested on the idea that researchers would be happy to repeat that kind of search on a number of other systems. Archives are often about a whole wealth of different subjects – we all know how often there are unexpected and exciting finds. A specialist repository for any one discipline will have archives that reach way beyond that discipline into all sorts of fascinating areas.

It seems undeniable that data is going to become more open and that we should promote flexible access through a number of discovery routes, but this throws up challenges around version control, measuring impact, brand and identity. We always have to be cognisant of funding, and widely disseminated data does not always help us with a funding case because we lose control of the statistics around use and any kind of correlation between visits to our website and bums on seats. Maybe one of the challenges is therefore around persuading top-level managers and funders to look at this whole area with a new perspective?

The long tail of archives

April 10, 2011 / Jane Stevenson

For many of us, the importance of measuring use and impact are coming more to the fore. Funders are often keen for indications of the ‘value’ of archives and typically look for charts and graphs that can provide some kind of summary of users’ interaction with archives. For the Hub, in the most direct sense this is about use of the descriptions of archives, although, of course, we are just as interested in whether researchers go on to consult archives directly.

The pattern of use of archives and the implications of this are complex. The long tail has become a phrase that is banded around quite a bit, and to my mind it is one of those concepts that is quite useful. It was popularised by Chris Anderson, more in relation to the commercial world, relating to selling a smaller number of items in large quantities and a large number of items in relatively small quantities, and you can read more about it in Wikipedia: Long Tail.

If we think about books, we might assume that a smaller number of popular titles are widely used and use gradually declines until you reach a long tail of low use. We might think that the pattern, very broadly speaking, is a bit like this:

I attended a talk at the UKSG Conference recently, where Terry Bucknell from the University of Liverpool was talking about the purchase of e-books for the University. He had some very whizzy and really quite absorbing statistics that analysed the use of packages of e-books. It seems that it is hard to predict use and that whilst a new package of e-books is the most widely used for that particular year, the older packages are still significantly used, and indeed, some books that are barely used one year may be get significant use in subsequent years. The patterns of use suggested that patron-driven acquisition, or selection of titles after one year of use, were not as good value as e-book packages, although you cannot accurately measure the return on investment after only one year.

Archives are kind of like this only a whole lot more tricky to deal with.

For archives, my feeling is that the graph is more like this:

No prizes for guessing which are the vastly more used collections*. We have highly used collections for popular research activities, archives of high-profile people and archives around significant events, and it is often these that are digitised in order to protect the originals. But it is true to say that a large proportion of archives are in the ‘long tail’ of use.

I think this can be a problem for us. Use statistics can dominate perceptions of value and influence funding, often very profoundly. Yet I think that this is completely the wrong way to look at it. Direct use does not correlate to value, not within archives.

I think there are a number of factors at work here:

The use of archives is intimately bound up with how they are catalogued. If you have a collection of letters, and just describe it thus, maybe with the main author (or archival ‘creator’), and covering dates, then researchers will not know that there are letters by a number of very interesting people, about a whole range of subjects of great interest for all sorts of topics. Often, archivists don’t have the time to create rich metadata (I remember the frustrations of this lack of time). Having worked in the British Architectural Library, I remember that we had great stuff for social history, history of empire, in particular the Raj in India, urban planning, environment, even the history of kitchen design or local food and diet habits. We also had a wonderful collection of photographs, and I recall the Photographs Curator showing me some really early and beautiful photographs of Central Park in New York. Its these kind of surprises that are the stuff of archives, but we don’t often have time to bring these out in the cataoguing process.
The use of a particular archive collection may be low, and yet the value gained from the insights may be very substantial. Knowledge gained as a result of research in the archives may feed into one author’s book or article, and from there it may disseminate widely. So, one use of one archive may have high value over time. If you fed this kind of benefit in as indirect use, the pattern would look very different.
The ‘value’ of archives may change over time. Going back to my experience at the British Architectural Library, I remember being told how the drawings of Sir Edwin Lutyens were not considered particularly valuable back in the 1950s – he wasn’t very fashionable after his death. Yet now he is recognised as a truly great architect, and his archives and drawings are highly prized.
The use of archives may change over time. Just because an archive has not been used for some time – maybe only a couple of researchers have accessed it in a number of years – it doesn’t mean that it won’t become much more heavily used. I think that research, just like many things, is subject to fashions to some extent, and how we choose to look back at our past changes over time. This is one of the challenges for archivists in terms of acquisitions. What is required is a long-term perspective but organisations all too often operate within short-term perspectives.
Some archives may never be highly used, maybe due to various difficulties interpreting them. I suppose Latin manuscripts come to mind, but also other manuscripts that are very hard to read and those pesky letters that are cross-written. Also, some things are specialised and require professional or some kind of expert knowledge in order to understand them. This does not make them less valuable. It’s easy to think of examples of great and vital works of our history that are not easy for most people to read or interpret, but that are hugely important.
Some archives are very fragile, and therefore use has to be limited. Digitising may be one option, but this is costly, and there are a lot of fragile archives out there.

I’m sure I could think of some more – any thoughts on this are very welcome!

So, I think that it’s important for archivists to demonstrate that whilst there may be a long tail to archives, the value of many of those archives that are not highly used can be very substantial. I realise that this is not an easy task, but we do have one invention in our favour: The Web. Not to mention the standards that we have built up over time to help us to describe our content. The long tail graph does demonstrate to us that the ‘long tail of use’ can be just as much, or more, than the ‘high column of use’. The use of the Web is vital in making this into a reality, because researchers all over the world can discover archives that were previously extremely hard to surface. That does still leave the problems of not being able to catalogue in depth in order to help surface content…the experiments with crowd-sourcing and user generated content may prove to be one answer. I’d like to see a study of this – have the experiments with asking researchers to help us catalogue our content proved successful if we take a broad overview? I’ve seen some feedback on individual projects, such as OldWeather:

“Old Weather (http://www.oldweather.org) is now more than 50% complete, with more than 400,000 pages transcribed and 80 ships’ logs finished. This is all thanks to the incredible effort that you have all put in. The science and history teams are constantly amazed at the work you’re all doing.” (a recent email sent out to the contributors, or ‘ship captains’).

If anyone has any thoughts or stories about demonstrating value, we’d love to hear your views.

* family history sources

New Horizons

February 15, 2011 / Jane Stevenson

The Horizon Report is an excellent way to get a sense of emerging and developing technologies, and it is worth thinking about what they might mean for archives. In this post I concentrate on the key trends that are featured for the next 1-4 years.

Electronic Books

“[E]lectronic books are beginning to demonstrate capabilities that challenge the very definition of reading.”

Electronic books promise not just convenience, but also new ways of thinking about reading. They encourage interactive, social and collaborative approaches. Does this have any implications for archives? Most archives are paper-based and do not lend themselves so well to this kind of approach. We think of consulting archives as a lone pursuit, in a reading room under carefully controlled conditions. The report refers to “a dynamic journey that changes every time it is opened.” An appealing thought, and indeed we might feel that archives also offer this kind of journey. Increasingly we have digital and born-digital archives, but could these form part of a more collaborative and interactive way of learning? Issues of authenticity, integrity and intellectual property may mitigate against this.

Whilst we may find it hard to see how archives may not become a part of this world – we are talking about archives, after all, and not published works – there may still be implications around the ways that people start to think about reading. Will students become hooked on rich and visual interfaces and collaborative opportunities that simply do not exist with archives?

Mobiles

“According to a recent report from mobile manufacturer Ericsson, studies show that by 2015, 80% of people accessing the Internet will be doing so from mobile devices.”

Mobiles are a major part of the portable society. Archive repositories can benefit from this, ensuring that people can always browse their holdings, wherever they are. We need to be involved in mobile innovation. As the report states: “Cultural heritage organizations and museums are also turning to mobiles to educate and connect with audiences.” We should surely see mobiles as an opportunity, not a problem for us, as we increasingly seek to broaden our user-base and connect with other domains. Take a look at the ‘100 most educational iPhone Apps‘. They include a search of US historical documents with highlighting and the ability to add notes.

Augmented Reality

We have tended to think of augmented reality as something suitable for marketing, social engagement and amuseument. But it is starting to provide new opportunities for learning and changing expectations around access to information. This could provide opportunities for archives to engage with users in new ways, providing a more visual experience. Could it provide a means to help people understand what archives are all about? Stanford University in the US has created an island in Second Life. The unique content that the archives provide was seen as something that could draw visitors back and showcase the extensive resources available. Furthermore, they created a ‘virtual archives’, giving researchers an opportunity to explore the strong rooms, discover and use collections and collaborate in real time.

The main issue around using these kinds of tools is going to be the lack of skills and resources. But we may still have a conflict of opinions over whether virtual reality really has a place in ‘serious research’. Does it trivialize archives and research? Or does it provide one means to engage younger potential users of archives in a way that is dynamic and entertaining? I think that it is a very positive thing if used appropriately. The Horizon Report refers to several examples of its use in cultural heritage: the Getty Museum are providing ‘access’ to a 17th century collector’s cabinet of wonders; the Natural History Museum in London are using it in an interactive video about dinosaurs; the Museum of London are using it to allow people to view 3D historical images overlaid on contemporary buildings. Another example is the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, using AR to show the environment around the Museum 100 years ago. In fact, AR does seem to lend itself particularly well to teaching people about the history around them.

Game-Based Learning

Another example of blending entertainment with learning, games are becoming increasingly popular in higher education, and the Serious Games movement is an indication of how far we have come from the notion that games are simply superficial entertainment. “[R]esearch shows that players readily connect with learning material when doing so will help them achieve personally meaningful goals.” For archives, which are often poorly understood by people, I think that gaming may be one possible means to explain what archives are, how to navigate through them and find what may be of interest, and how to use them. How about something a bit like this Smithsonian initiative, Ghosts of a Chance, but for archives?

These technologies offer new ways of learning, but they also suggest that our whole approach to learning is changing. As archivists, we need to think about how this might impact upon us and how we can use it to our advantage. Archives are all about society, identity and story. Surely, therefore, these technologies should give us opportunities to show just how much they are a part of our life experiences.