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Archives of the People, by the People, for the People

Archives of the People, by the People, for the People. Max J. Evans presented by Erin Hyejin Kim. Agenda. The problem. The Problem. Exponentially grown volume of records Archives barely have the resources to manage them Budget cuts

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Archives of the People, by the People, for the People

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  1. Archives of the People, by the People, for the People Max J. Evans presented by Erin Hyejin Kim

  2. Agenda

  3. The problem

  4. The Problem • Exponentially grown volume of records • Archives barely have the resources to manage them • Budget cuts • Web access to archives: how can process all the information needs? • Discussion • What are the most important jobs for archivists in this web-access archive era? • Why current system will fail?

  5. Initial Processing • Initial processing: after appraisal and collecting • Green and Meissner model of initial processing • MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) • Container list (EAD: Encoded Archival Description) • To show people that we have these data. • Problem • We have to do it for EVERY collections. (No backlog allowed) • We need an effective system to generate basic description • Discussion • What hinders automated MARC and EAD generation?

  6. Detailed Processing • Some collections need more processing • What collections? • Collections that researchers want more • Higher demand • How detail? • Initial processing: collection level • Detailed processing: file level • How can we do find the demand? • Invite researchers to call or email us • Discussion • Are you sure researchers will contact us?

  7. Item-level Description • Even more detailed processing • Very detailed item-by-item description • Too much work: Archivists alone cannot do. • Volunteers are needed • Discussions • Why do we need item-by-item description? • Can we solely rely on volunteers?

  8. Archival Digitization and Systems • Digitization of collections • Better than traveling to the archive and reading in the reading room • Digitizing-on-demand • User’s demand  employee processes  digitalized • Digitizing for internal institutional demands • Automatically digitize anything comes on the copy machine • Large-scale digitization • External funding • Commercial interests (Google or Ancestry.com) • Discussion • Why should archives be digitized? • What are the collections that need to be digitized first?

  9. The solution

  10. The Commons and the Archives • The Commons • The cooperation of many interested parties • Like open source software: no one pays for developing Linux but it has been improved a lot! • Why don’t we take the model for archives? • What can the commons contribute? • Minimum metadata  extensible metadata • Archivist: very basic metadata • People: adding their own metadata • Discussion • How and why could open source software be successful? • May people give the same help for archives?

  11. Archives by the People • Like Linux and Wikipedia • People can freely add their contributions to archives • We need a system that can help users come and contribute • Discussion • Wikipedia may benefit everyone, but archives may benefit only some interest groups. Can Wikipedia’s model be suitable for archives?

  12. Why Would Anyone Participate? • Benkler’s 3 incentives • Monetary rewards • Intrinsic hedonic rewards • Social-psychological rewards • Discussion • Who would be volunteers for archives? • What will be the strongest incentive for them? • What would be archivists’ job if this model is adopted?

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