Web Watching For Archivists

Archive Advent

2011-12-13T11:45:00.001Z

A brief return to blog about the lovely advent calendars that lots of archives have put together this year.

[Image from here]

Your paintings

2011-06-24T16:19:00.000+01:00

Love this! Not really archives but a great use of tagging and sharing of collections.

Your Paintings is a joint project between the Public Catalogue Foundation and the BBC with participation from organisations across the UK.

The project is:

A website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country.

Ask Archivists Day 9th June

2011-06-09T09:41:00.000+01:00

Ask Archivists day has kicked off.

You can see a snazzy visualisation of the questions being asked via this twitter fountain

Ask Archivists Day

2011-06-07T14:26:00.000+01:00

This Thursday (9 June 2011) is Ask Archivists Day on Twitter!!

The aim of the day is that:

On that day everybody can ask questions to archivists in the world on Twitter. The main goal of the Twitter event #AskArchivists is to get more attention for archives and their collections and to know what archivists like about their profession. And ofcourse that archivists and people on Twitter can get directly into contact with eachother. Through Twitter, archivists inform their followers about events, new collections, publications and other things worth knowing. They also keep in touch with their colleagues about their profession. People on Twitter can ask questions, give tips and can retweet interesting archive tweets.

Its been organised by Ask Archivists who have a twitter account (naturally) and a blog where you can find out more. There are also some great youtube videos and presentations on slideshare including this one:

Ideas on how to promote #AskArchivists

View more presentations from Arkivformidling

23 Things for Archivists

2011-06-03T12:57:00.000+01:00

I discovered this blog thanks to a listserv email from Peter K and its great. Put together by the SAA's Reference, Access and Outreach section (who incidentally have their own blog)

23 Things for Archivists is "an online program designed to help archivists learn about some of the most commonly used social media (or Web 2.0) tools."

There are 23 things aimed at beginners which include blogging, facebook apps, online timelines and creative commons. But there are also Things 24-46 for intermediate type things and a section for the future Things 47+.

This is a really great way for Archivists to take control of their own knowledge about these tools, keep up to date with advances in technology (I'm off to check out some of the online timeline tools) in a clear and organised way. Each thing has a post which gives an overview, examples, resources and tasks to try yourself.

RCAHMS and Canmore

2011-05-23T16:58:00.000+01:00

Beyond Text have interviewed Rebecca Bailey (Head of Education and Outreach, RCAHMS) and Michela Clari (Researcher, Edinburgh University) about the potential impact of social media on archives with a focus on Canmore which was opened up in 2009 to allow public contributions either as new images or comments on existing images.

Read more about it on RCAHMS.

One Day Diary event for Mass Observation Archive

2011-05-14T22:59:00.001+01:00

Today (Thursday 12th May*) is the day that the Mass Observation Archive are asking for people across the UK to keep a diary of their day and donate it to the archive. Read about it on their website here.

Thanks for Kathryn at Archives and Auteurs for the info about this and the tweets from MassObsArchive on twitter for reminding me about it and prompting this post.

Incidentally Faber has a series of Mass Observation books, including one on the May 12th 1937 diary day.

* Due to blogger breaking this post was delayed :(

UKAD Forum

2011-03-11T15:23:00.002Z

Grea summary from Kathryn over at Archives and Auteurs on the UK Archives Discovery Network (UKAD) forum meeting held last week. Go read it here now, there's links to presentations and everything.

Public Records (Scotland) Bill

2010-12-08T10:17:00.002Z

Live streaming now from Holyrood of the first panel session for the Public Records (Scotland) Bill. Today the panel is hearing from the Keeper of the Records of Scotland and members of the Public Records Bill Team who are giving evidence. View the session here.

Follow an archive day

2010-11-10T16:20:00.004Z

Friday 12th November is follow an archive day on twitter so what to do about it?

As ever ArchivesNext has it all covered here along with some interesting information about how successful it was for libraries last year. Make sure if you are on twitter and you're going to tweet about archives to use the #followanarchive hashtag

Check out the followanarchive list for new archives to follow and take a look at the promo videos for the day on youtube.

This slideshow is a great guide for getting started on twitter ahead of the day:

Followanarchive

I'm definitely more of a listener than a tweeter on twitter but it is very useful for finding out about what different archives are doing and keeping up to date with things. My top 5 recommendations are:

Round up

2010-10-17T20:32:00.004+01:00

I've been a bit busy planning a wedding to post here at all really, but this week I spotted lots of good stuff so thought a quick round up would be appropriate.

A report from NARA on the federal use of Web 2.0.

A global study into online behaviour from Digital Life.

Lots of new UK archive blogs

DNA & Social Responsibility Project at King's College London
Enid Blyton Collection at Seven Stories
NUI Galway Theatre Archive
Old Weather project
Archiving a blog

The 2010 state of the blogosphere report is due out on the 3 November here so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Some crowdsourcing from old weather which is a JISC project that is asking members of the public to help transcribe information from Royal Navy logbooks. This will make information about past climate and historical events widely accessible.

Analysis of user contributions to archives.

Do we need index names terms? A discussion from archiveshub.

Behind the scenes at the University of Glasgow

2010-09-17T10:00:00.002+01:00

The University of Glasgow Archive Services have put together this great video about their collections. It includes information about their collections and shows lots of footage of their 3 miles of shelving and storage facilities.

SOA conference

2010-09-03T14:43:00.002+01:00

The SOA conference has been happening all this week, I really wanted to go and hear Paul Sillitoe talk about his work with technical records but couldn't make it.

If you also couldn't make it then you can check the programme here to see what you missed and keep track on twitter via the #soa tag for what's happening.

Sarah Wickham has also been blogging about it here.

Guest post

2010-09-03T11:59:00.001+01:00

Another guest post for the UKLON Digital Curation blog, this time on how to make time to do web 2.0 in your working day.

Read it here.

Guest post

2010-08-23T10:18:00.001+01:00

I'm guest posting today over at the UKLON Cultural Heritage blog about the benefits of using web 2.0 in your archive.

Read it here.

Old skool storage

2010-08-13T17:15:00.004+01:00

Not really web 2.0 but there are some great pictures on the Guardian today of the storage facilities at DeepStore in a former salt mine in Winsford.

The site is a 200 million cubic metre underground salt mine which holds 30km worth of records for the National Archives. You can read a short case study about their work with TNA here.

(Thanks to Gary Collins for the link to this on the listserve.)

Personal archiving

2010-08-05T11:20:00.002+01:00

The Library of Congress has produced a series of guidance on preserving personal collections of digital material like photographs, videos, emails, documents and websites.

The guidance comes in a pdf version which can also be viewed as individual web pages for each topic with some of them having podcasts as well as part of the 'conversations about digital preservation' series.

Winners of 2010 Best Archives on the Web

2010-08-02T22:27:00.002+01:00

ArchivesNext has announced the winners of the 2010 best archives on the web awards here. The three categories were:

Best re-purposing of descriptive data
Best use of crowdsourcing for description
Most innovative archives on the Web

Go check it out to see who won what?

UK legislation online

2010-07-30T12:11:00.003+01:00

New from the Ministry of Justice and the TNA a website that "brings together every single piece of UK legislation from the magna carta to the present day".

The site is called legislation.gov.uk and its a great resource, very easy to navigate around and identify what changes have been made to legislation. Because it goes back to the 13th century it also makes if very easy to view historical Acts of Parliament, for example the Act of Union in 1707, the Libraries Offences Act 1898 and the Public Records (Scotland) Act 1809

According to the press release the site now contains 6.5 million pdf documents and will be updated every day at 2.30 pm with the latest changes to legislation. And you can hear Lord McNally (Minister of State for the MofJ) talking about it on the BBC here.

London Lives

2010-07-28T10:56:00.005+01:00

Is a project that has been funded by the ESRC, and implemented by the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield and the Higher Education Digitisation Service at the University of Hertfordshire.

The London Lives website has brought together 240,000 manuscripts from 14 archives giving access to 3.35 million names. It provides access to documents from parish registers, criminal records, coroners' records and hospital records. There are also plans for a wiki to be launched in the future.

If you register with the site it allows you to save documents in your own personal workspace. The site has a lives page that contains information about individuals, some with some brilliant names like Repentance Hedges and Quilt Arnold.

There was a good write up about it in the guardian if you want to know more.

NARA gets a wiki

2010-07-09T21:49:00.002+01:00

The National Archives in American have launched their own wiki called Our Archives

From their press release the wiki:

“Our Archives” provides a collaborative space for members of the public, researchers, and staff to share knowledge about National Archives records, resources and research. The wiki is an opportunity for researchers, historians, archivists, and citizen archivists to work together to create pages on specific records or topics as well as to share information and resources to connect with other researchers.

Users may participate in the wiki in the following ways:

Create new pages and edit pre-existing pages about historical subjects and records held by the National Archives;
Expand upon a description in the National Archives online catalog;
Publish a transcription of a document;
Add information to build upon other resources;
Collaborate with other users working on similar subjects or to work together on research projects;
Join in the discussions for various pages

Is there an app for that?

2010-07-02T15:35:00.006+01:00

While I don't personally have an iphone, (I went android instead) there loads of fun apps for the iphone from archives and museums. There a list of apps here but these are some of my favourites:

The John Murray Archive app (for iphone) from the NLS

This app gives you information about the 7 generations of the publishing dynasty and "includes audio-visual introductions, zoomable images, audio descriptions and collection galleries so you can discover and enjoy just some of the hundreds of thousands of items in this unique collection."

Walking through time app (for iphone & android) by Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh University.

This isn't publicly available yet but the idea is to allow users to view historical maps of their real-time location on their smartphone.

**Update** This is now available for public download and its free through the itunes store.

TNA app (for iphone)

This app from the national archives gives users a selection of images from the archives with the option to order prints of them as well as some background information and historical context.

UKOLN guest post

2010-06-28T11:51:00.003+01:00

I've a guest post all about this blog and archives 2.0 over on the UKOLN Cultural Heritage blog today.

So head over there to read it.

Incidentally, I've written about UKOLN before here and the excellent range of briefing documents they have on all things web 2.0 here.

Historypin

2010-06-25T13:19:00.005+01:00

Historypin is a project launched this month by we are what we do and google that "aims to get people from different generations to spend more time together."

It allows you to view photographs of a street scene using google maps technology. Try it out here.

So far images have been uploaded by individuals as well as archives and other organisations like Marks & Spencer, Biggleswade History Society and Arsenal football club. As an archive you can arrange to do a bulk upload of your pictures to the site.

This video from the Historypin youtube channel gives a fuller overview:

TNA does it again

2010-06-21T17:08:00.001+01:00

The National Archives (TNA) have consistently been a leading user and developer of web 2.0 technologies, and with their latest venture they are pushing ahead again. They have created the National Archives Labs which is a section of their website "where you are invited to test prototypes, provide feedback and help us to develop further our ideas for exciting online resources."

At the moment they have the following tools in development

Valuation Office Map Finder - you can identify and order maps of England and Wales from 1910 to 1915.

Person Search - allows you to search across a number of their name rich databases at once.

UK History Photo Finder - allows you to search and view digitised photographs of the UK and Ireland.

I think the number of comments they have already received for these tools shows what a strong user base they have and how well it works to open up the floor to your users and ask them what they think. Big thumbs up to TNA!

Twitter for archivists

2010-06-21T16:38:00.002+01:00

Catching up with myself a bit and I decided I should include something on how to use twitter in an archive, particularly as I've a new favourite tweeter - Orkney Library.

So what can you use twitter for in your archive? This great presentation by Lisa Grimm on slide share goes through the options:

Twitter for Archivists

View more presentations from superfectablog.

Examples of twitter use that I'm liking are using it to 'tweet' original content like George Orwell's diaries, the UK War Cabinet's papers. Repositories using it to share news and information like Strathclyde Archive, West Yorkshire Archive and the National Archives. And Wiltshire Archive and their document delivery tweeting.

You can find me @kkingaling but I rarely post and even less rarely anything to do with archives. If I do I'll be sure to use the #archives tag.

Internet for Archives

2010-06-11T14:54:00.002+01:00

A new and brilliant resource for finding out about archives has been produced by Lisa Jenkins of the Archives Hub. It takes the form of an online tutorial and goes through all the different resources there are for finding out information about archives and online catalogues on the Internet.

The tutorial was produced as part of the Virtual Training Suite to teach Internet research skills to students and researchers and help them find archive materials and information online.

"The tutorial has four main sections:

Tour – focuses on the academic information landscape on the Internet and aims to create a mental map for students of the key scholarly sources for their subject.
Discover – offers updated guidance on how to find scholarly information online; choosing the right search tool and looks at the importance of developing a search strategy.
Judge – discusses how critical thinking can improve the quality of online research and provides guidance on how to judge which Internet resources are appropriate for University work.
Success – provides practical examples of students using the Internet for research – successfully and unsuccessfully, so that students can learn from the mistakes of others, as well as by example."

This is exactly the kind of resource that I would have killed for as a baby archivist when I knew or hoped there must be information out there but didn't know where it all was.

Its an excellent resource to be able to point researchers towards as it explains all the different catalogues and portals that are available and what they should be used for. It also rather helpfully goes through an example catalogue result to explain what the different information fields are telling you and the different archival terms.

So, check it out and tell all your friends!

Virtual tour of 150 year old archive repository

2010-06-08T17:01:00.003+01:00

The Parliamentary Archives have recently unveiled their virtual tour of the Victoria Tower which was built in 1860 as a state of the art facility to house the parliamentary archives.

The video can be viewed here and takes you through the archive storeroom and the original Act room, with information points about certain documents.

Also check out their introductory video to the archives on youtube

Preserving 19th Century Newspapers

2010-04-28T10:39:00.000+01:00

An interesting video from the people at Planets about the British Library project to digitise their 19th Century newpaper collection. "The film is the first of four Planets case studies showing how national libraries and archives in Europe are using Planets tools to preserve large and valuable digital collections."

The video is also available on the Digital Preservation Europe youtube channel.

TNA joins Flickr commons

2010-04-09T08:30:00.004+01:00

On 24th March, the National Archives joined the Flickr Commons group. There's a post about it on the Flickr blog but really just go and check out their photostream as they've got some great stuff including Jane Austen's will from 1817!!!

Source

Vatican archives online

2010-04-08T11:02:00.003+01:00

The Vatican has put some of its documents covering a 142 year period online here. The documents can be viewed with a very good zooming system and include lots of interesting things like the proceedings of the trial against Galileo Galilei and background information about the particular document here is the Galileo trial info.

Their site has other cool features like a virtual tour of their rooms.

Collector in chief

2010-04-08T10:53:00.000+01:00

From ArchivesNext, the Archivist of the United States has a blog. Trying to work out if collector in chief or keeper of the records of Scotland is a cooler title. I think the 'keeper' has it as that's his real job title and I can't find anything that say that the 'collector' is official.

Blog love - letters of note

2010-03-31T13:48:00.000+01:00

In an attempt to give this blog some love, I'm going to start sharing some of the cool archive related blogs that I've got bookmarked each week.

This week its Letters of Note, a lovely blog that provides images of original letters along with their transcripts for those letters that the editor Shaun Usher believes deserves a wider audience. More information about the blog and the idea behind it is available here and here.

So if you're an archivist with a letter, telegram, note or postcard that you'd like to share get in touch as the site welcomes submissions.

Ghostsigns

2010-03-23T21:30:00.000Z

Interesting article from the Guardian here about the History of Advertising Trust's project to create a Ghostsign Archive. This aims to collect image to create "a permanent photographic record of advertising painted directly onto brickwork within the UK."

There seems to have already been in existence a Ghostsigns project that set up a Flickr group called ghostsigns to collect images. This group has nearly 4,000 images at the moment and 415 members which is pretty impressive.

More information about the whole thing is available from their blog and on their website.

Its got me thinking about the ghostsigns I pass every day.

Listening

2009-12-23T12:24:00.001Z

A video by the Rauch Brothers who have animated the story of 86-year-old World War II veteran Joseph Robertson who fought at the Battle of the Bulge. Over 60 years later, he still can't forget one soldier he killed there.

Germans in the Woods from Rauch Brothers on Vimeo.

This story was captured as part of the Story Corps project. Story Corps is an organisation working in the United States that aims "to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening." It is one of the largest oral history project with over 50,000 people sharing their stories since 2003.

I've been thinking about making use of some elements of the various oral history techniques in my work to capture at least some of the knowledge our staff and volunteers have about collections and the shipbuilding and engineering industries in Scotland. As a result I've been reading a lot about oral history projects and techniques.

The Story Corps approach appealed to me and I thought I would include it here as I think it has several web 2.0 elements to it. They encourage collaboration with others (for more information about the collaboration between Rauch Brothers and Story Corps see here), their make hundreds of the recordings available on their website to listen to and also have podcasts.

The Interactive Archivist

2009-12-07T10:36:00.000Z

Another great resource I've recently discovered is the Interactive Archivist webpages created by the Society of American Archivists. This site has general information about Web 2.0 and how archivists can use it, as well as descriptions about the different technologies and a bibliography for further reading.

The best thing about this site is the case studies. At the moment there are 10 case studies covering all the different types of web 2.0 tools and technologies. I find it very inspirational to read in detail how other organisations are using web 2.0 technologies and its great to get some information on how useful the experiments have been for that organisation.

What I particularly like about this resource is that the Society of American Archivists recognised that there was a gap in the existing literature and did something to help plug this gap.

Christmas ideas using archives(ish)

2009-11-30T13:27:00.001Z

I discovered this amazing site at the weekend. It can take images from museums like the V&A and National Maritime Museum, photography collections and even Haynes Car Manuals and turn them into wall murals, prints or other custom options.

My favourite (so far) is the letter C from Edward Lear's 'A Children's Nonsense Alphabet' c.1880.

So, consider surface view if you're looking for something different this year.

Of course, gifts for the archivist in your life like a TNA shopper or pocket magnifier are available from the TNA shop. Or you could go for a witty slogan on a hoodie to replace that storeroom cardigan.

ICA-Atom

2009-11-06T16:29:00.000Z

A new option for those looking to use an open source alternative for archival description has been released. The ICA-Atom is a project from the International Council on Archives which provides a software to help and encourage institutions to make their archival holdings available online. Of course as an ICA project it is fully compatible with and based on ICA standards.

It is still in beta release at the moment but it is great to have another option, more information about the project is available here and it looks good so go check it out.

Scotland's Places

2009-10-27T15:04:00.000Z

A new "mash-up" resource has been created by the National Archives of Scotland and the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments. It is called Scotland's Places and it allows you to search by a location and then bring up information about the said place from these resources:

Maps and plans of cities, towns, villages, farms, roads, canals, harbours, churches, schools, public buildings, private houses, mines and quarries.
Photographs of the built environment in The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.
Archaeological reports on historic and prehistoric sites.
Manuscript records and printed books from millions of pages in government and private records, including tax rolls, owners of land and heritages, and the annual reports of county Medical Officers of Health.

This is one of those sites that you can lose hours in.

Make the Internet work for you

2009-09-29T15:57:00.000+01:00

That was the jist of my final slides from last week and I think it would be my main tip for anyone struggling to think about how to fit web 2.0 into their working day, particularly blogging.

The simplest way to make the Internet work for you, is to create a start page. This is an example of the one I use in my job for the Ballast Trust.

A start page is the page that appears when you open up a web browser and you can set one up with several different providers like igoogle, netvibes or bloglines. By using a start page you can customise what content you see and subscribe to news feeds or rss feeds to ensure that content is pushed to you rather than you having to go around various different website to check if anything new has been posted.

On your start page you might have:

Email - this lets you see new enquiries or comments sent to your blog.
Bookmarks - browse useful websites or articles that you have saved previously, it can be useful to have a bookmark for items that you think will make good posts for your blog.
Reader - this feature lets you read the new posts from blogs you've subscribed to and perhaps prompt you to comment on them.
Flickr stream - this can show you new activity on your flickr account.
News feeds - you can subscribe to existing ones like the TNA feed or set up feeds for specific subjects like "literary archives", or "shipbuilding scotland". This can help you keep blog posts and your work current and relevant.

Obviously a start page will only be as good as the information that you subscribe to and decide to put on it, so you need to make an effort in the beginning to find other sources of information that you can work off and related blogs or rss feeds. Once it is set up though it should be easier to make it part of your daily life, particularly if you have to look at it every morning!

Web 2.0 and Archives

2009-09-28T10:32:00.001+01:00

Web 2.0 and Archives

View more presentations from Kiara King.

New presentation

2009-09-28T10:21:00.003+01:00

On Friday I was in Hawick to do a short presentation about Web 2.0 for Archives and more specifically to talk about the blogs that I use for work. These are the Ballast Blog and when I'm at Glasgow University the Archive Services section of this blog.

I've put my slides up on slide share so they are now available here.

One of the things I did differently for this presentation was try to explain how I attempt to work blogging and other web 2 activities into my daily routine. This seemed to be quite useful so I'm going to write it up as a separate series of posts this week for this blog.

The other presentation that morning was about the Scottish Borders Archive and their blogs, voyage of the vampire and my diary and my secret. These are two great blogs based on the diary of George Henry Scott Douglas and the diaries and letters of his sister Hannah Charlotte Douglas.

If we build it, will they come?

2009-09-08T16:27:00.004+01:00

Joy Palmer has written an excellent article about Archives 2.0 in the July edition of Ariadne. The article 'Archives 2.0: If We Build It, Will They Come?'

It got me thinking about whether I've focused too much on the tools of web 2.0 rather than the ideas and I think I'll definitely take on board some of Joy's ideas for a presentation I'm doing in a few weeks at Hawick.

There is also some discussion about it on the forum of the Archives 2.0 ning site here if you want to join in.

SOA Conference

2009-09-03T14:46:00.002+01:00

The Society of Archivists' conference is happening this week down in Bristol. I posted a while back about the web 2.0 aspects that they were introducing this year. Before the conference begun, the blog was used to give people an opportunity to ask questions for some speakers ahead of time (see this post for Tim Padfield's session).

Since the conference actually started though the trickle of posts on the blog have increased and I'm now receiving regular posts through my reader about the different presentations. So a big thank you to Jenny (Hon Sec) and the other authors for getting these posts up, I've found them very useful.

So if you'd like to know what's happening at the conference and weren't able to attend in person, check out the blog or twitter feed.

Wikis and project planning

2009-09-02T08:30:00.001+01:00

Last week I attended an information session on a new initiative for archivists in the UK called the Archives Pace Setter Scheme (I blogged about it here).

This scheme aims to highlight the new and innovative projects that archives and archivists across the UK are doing and at the same time to promote better project working and planning within the archive sector.

I had thought of lots of projects that I could do at work, some of which involve web 2.0 tools like our blog or flickr experiments and others which are more routine but new to us like a cataloguing database.

I hadn't thought about using web 2.0 tools to manage projects or plan them until I read this post about the use of wiki software by the Archives Service Centre at the University of Pittsburgh. They are using it internally within their department to monitor the progress of finding aid projects, unprocessed collections and digitisation projects as well as to record ideas for student projects and feedback from users. More details are available in this newsletter article or on ArchivesNext.

Archives 2.0 wiki

2009-09-01T11:28:00.002+01:00

I've previously posted about the list of web 2.0 technologies and examples of archives using them that ArchivesNext compiled here. This list has been turned into a wiki resource called Archives 2.0 and has loads of examples and links to archives 2.0 in action.

It's a great place to start if you are trying to convince your management of the benefits or looking for examples of other institutions doing certain things.

I particularly like the examples of twitter and microblogs, most of which I didn't know about and there are lots of interesting ideas for using twitter to post diaries entries or allow users to ask questions as well as simply providing general updates.

Online class on Web 2.0 and Archives

2009-08-28T15:21:00.002+01:00

Kate Theimer of the excellent archivesnext blog is holding an online class on Tuesday 13th October (6-7:30pm GMT) entitled "Introduction to Web 2.0 in Archives...or What You Need to Know in a Nutshell".

As well as her blog, Kate has also written a book on the subject so definitely knows what she is talking about and it looks like it will provide a good introduction and overview of the subject. More details are available on her blog here and on the Society of American Archivists' website here about the content and how to register.

Archives on ning

2009-08-25T10:14:00.003+01:00

There is an Archives2.0 ning community now. This is a social networking community that allows you to do many of the usual things like:

Participate in the forum discussion
Add photos and videos
Blog
Start groups and events

However, most importantly there are lots of examples of innovative archives service delivery, hints, tips and new tools suggested by other members. There is also a Records Management 2.0 ning group which has been going for a while.

The Archives 2.0 network was set up using Ning. This is a service that allows you to create social networks for specific purposes. Having joined today and taken a quick look around the site it looks like it could have potential outside of professional networking. For example it could be used by an archive service to create a network or community area for users of archive services or researchers specialising in a particular topic.

Archives on YouTube

2009-06-25T16:15:00.004+01:00

More about archives on YouTube, ArchivesNext has brought to my attention the fact that the United States National Archives have a new, very nice looking YouTube page here

The UK National Archives have been on YouTube since last year and their page can be found here. I particularly like this public information film from 1945.

SOA Conference goes Web 2.0!

2009-06-24T11:12:00.004+01:00

The Society of Archivists conference this year will have an official blog and twitter feed.

The conference is being held in Bristol this year Society from Tuesday 1st to Friday 4th September. The title of the conference is Fast Forward: access and preservation in a digital world.

I'm not going to this years conference but it will be great to stay in touch with what's happening via the blog and twitter. Its nice to see web 2.0 technologies being used for professional society events, especially after James' post about web 2.0 and the RMS here.

Web 2.0 the millionth word

2009-06-11T13:27:00.002+01:00

apparently...

To think it could've been noob, slumdog or carbon neutral.

Calculated by the Global Language Monitor, faqs about the process are here.

Endangered archives blog

2009-06-10T17:33:00.002+01:00

The British Library has a new blog about endangered archives here. It is the blog for the endangered archives programme who "aim to contribute to the preservation of archival material that is in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration world-wide”.

The blog is going to be used to discuss the work of the EAP and share some interesting examples of records that the programme has copied and how they catalogue such varied collections.

The British Library has quite a few blogs, for a full list see here.

International archives at Glasgow Uni

2009-06-09T09:45:00.002+01:00

To mark international archives day, Glasgow University Archives have put together an online map to show certain international highlights from their collection.

Check it out here, its a great way to show the impact of Glasgow University and Scottish businesses on the world.

International Archives Day

2009-06-09T01:10:00.003+01:00

So, its international archives day today. This is its second year and it is held on the 9th of June as that was the day in 1948 that the International Council on Archives was founded at UNESCO in Paris.

The day is mainly about raising awareness of archives and records within your country. The ICA believes that "as programmes for raising public awareness of archives are organized simultaneously in an increasing number of countries, a greater sense of international solidarity will be fostered among the participants."

Here's to international solidarity!

Poster from Japan to publicise international archives day there.

Web 2.0 and Societies

2009-06-04T08:38:00.003+01:00

James Lappin has written an interesting post about the impact of Web 2.0 for the Records Management Society here. All of what he says could apply to the Society of Archivists as well particularly ahead of potential changes to the structure of the archive sector. Will a new structure and body mean more Web 2.0 content and ventures?

James considers the impact of Web 2.0 on the membership of these societies, their events and conferences and he has some great suggestions. So go read it here.

Puffin archive

2009-06-01T11:13:00.002+01:00

Article in the Guardian today (here) about the Puffin archive.

Add your information to Canmore

2009-05-27T12:01:00.004+01:00

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) has an excellent online resource called Canmore. This allows you to search "over 275,000 buildings, archaeological and maritime sites across Scotland" and where digital images are available you can view them. Its a brilliant tool and I can spend hours on it searching for places I know and just browsing.

Since last week you have also been able to contribute to a beta version of the site that is being developed.

"For the first time you can now contribute your own information online to Scotland’s national collection of buildings, archaeology and industry. As part of the ongoing developments of the RCAHMS searchable online database Canmore, you can add photographs, personal memories and additional information to over 280,000 existing sites, ranging from some of the nation’s most iconic buildings to the remains of ancient settlements and maybe even your own house. Another new feature - called MyCanmore - allows you to customise Canmore to help you search for and return results that reflect your specific interests, requirements and preferences."

More information from the full press release here.

The beta Canmore is here and there is also a short survey to complete once you've had a play about with the new features.

Archive birthdays

2009-05-20T17:07:00.006+01:00

For work reasons I've had business archives on the brain and suddenly there are examples everywhere of businesses using their archives to mark anniversaries or sell their products.

125 years of Marks and Spencers

100 years of Persil

Persil birthday (site features timeline and fun facts and old tv adverts from 1955 onwards)
Advert

There's another one I've seen but I can't remember it just now and google is holding out on me with the answer.

Edit: Thanks to the helpful comment, I remembered which company I had been thinking of and it was Sainsburys.

140 years of Sainsburys

Great British favourite recipes
Advert
Timeline

250 years of Guinness

Guinness celebrates 250 years in September and they have put together a whole website to showcase their history. It includes an interactive timeline with links to images and video content, previous adverts and even live music on 'Arthur's Day'. There is also of course a new advert using old images:

Calling all Scottish archivists (and others)

2009-05-16T10:31:00.004+01:00

The Scottish Council of Archives is currently carrying out a project to develop Scottish Archives online. A consultation is happening at the moment and the final report will be published in June 2009.

Comments can be left on this blog. So it gives anyone the opportunity to say whether better, wider online access to Scottish archive collections is a good thing (yes!) but to raise questions about how this will happen, who will find the time and money to process the backlogs of collections and put them online?

It would be wonderful if there was a way for all archives repositories in Scotland to have detailed searchable information about their holdings online and a way to join up the efforts of the many smaller projects that exist at the moment.

Archives for the 21st century

2009-05-15T17:57:00.004+01:00

A new policy, archives for the 21st century, has been published by the TNA (in partnership with others) and is now available for consultation. The consultation exercise will run until 12 August 2009 and is available here.

The document states that it is "a call to action" and a response to the new information world that we find ourselves in. I thought is was interesting that the document says that the "leap into the future presents a major challenge for all archive services." I think opportunity would've been a better word here but hey-ho the document overall is very postive about online access to archives and demonstrating value to users.

There are some good examples of what other organisations have achieved and five key recommendations:

Fewer, bigger, better – working towards increased sustainability within the sector;
Strengthened leadership and a responsive, skilled workforce;
Co-ordinated response to the growing challenge of managing digital information so that it is accessible now and remains discoverable in the future;
Comprehensive online access for archive discovery through catalogues and to digitised archive content by citizens at a time and place that suits them;
Active participation in cultural and learning partnerships promoting a sense of identity and place within the community.

If you want to respond a questionnaire is available here. I think we can all agree that whatever the 21st century archive looks like, hopefully it won't involve helmut lamps:

(Image from life magazine via google)

Web 2.0 PhD

2009-05-07T20:21:00.002+01:00

From the archives-nra listserve:

'We think, not I think' Harnessing collaborative creativity to archival practice; implications of user participation for archival theory and practice. A three year full-time collaborative doctoral award has been awarded by the AHRC to UCL and TNA for a research student to explore the impact on archival theory and practice of embracing greater user participation in professional practice. More information here.

Digital preservation gets animated

2009-05-05T20:53:00.003+01:00

From the folks at DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE)

Digiman!!

As part of their "committment to make digital preservation materials available to the widest possible audience and to breaking down barriers to access they've release a series of short animations introducing and explaining digital preservation problems and solutions for the general public."

Future releases will be available here

Facebook for birders

2009-05-05T16:36:00.002+01:00

I discovered Birdpost whilst I was doing my bit for the Orwell Diaries blog and voting in the Webbys. It is a very slick, cleverly thought out site for 'birders' with all the web 2.0 features you might expect - user generated content, tagging, twitter and blog presence and even an iphone app. According to this info it will give 18 million US birders a way to chronicle, organize, map, and share their collective birding activities online.

It has nothing to do with archives except that I could see a similar resource working very well for certain user groups with an archival slant - perhaps railway enthusiasts or military researchers?? What would need to happen to get these archives enthusiasts to build a resource like this?

Anyhoo, it impressed me and I thought I'd share.

Best archives on the web announced

2009-04-22T20:27:00.001+01:00

Archives Next has announced the winners of the 2009 best archives on the web awards. Check it out!

BBC Archive in the news

2009-04-20T15:39:00.002+01:00

Guardian article today here about the BBC Archive. They have a very good website and its interesting to read about what they have planned for the project.

Museums & the Web 2009

2009-04-19T16:07:00.003+01:00

The 2009 conference Museums and the Web took place in Indianapolis on 15-18 April. This is a great resource for information about some of the best and most innovative projects in the museum world so I would recommend checking out the list of speakers and where applicable their papers here.

Some particularly relevant papers were:

"Time To Stop Doing and Start Thinking: A Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services"

"Museums & Wikis: Two Case Studies" featuring the Science Museum Object Wiki and The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) Wiki.

"Collection Effects: Examining the Actual Use of On-Line Archival Images"

Steve tagger

2009-04-17T14:52:00.005+01:00

I struggled a little on this last day of open source goodness for archives. So I've put together a post about the Steve Museum project. Although a museum focused project and an art museum one at that, I think that the tools Steve is developing can and will be equally applicable to any digital image whether it is an artifact, bookplate or document.

"Steve is a collaborative research project exploring the potential for user-generated descriptions of the subjects of works of art to improve access to museum collections and encourage engagement with cultural content." Further information about the project is available here:

The Steve project team has developed a suite of open source tools that enable tagging of museum collections and the review, analysis, and management of tags. And the open source tools (including the Steve tagger, a term review tool, and a reporting tool) themselves are available to download here.

Open source exhibitions

2009-04-16T18:35:00.005+01:00

Online exhibitions are a great way of pushing your content out to new audiences but they obviously cost money and take a lot of work so this open source tool called Omeka means that you don't need to spend time or money developing your web publishing software and can get straight to thinking about the content.

Some of the sites using omeka include:

The team behind it wanted to make publishing an exhibition as easy as starting a new blog according to this post.

Update: Just found a reference to these other tools for online exhibitions that might be worth a look at too.

Pachyderm
Open exhibit (in development)

Weddings!!!

2009-04-15T21:04:00.007+01:00

The V&A have come up with a brilliant way of generating a database of wedding fashion for an exhibition of wedding dresses they are organising in 2011.

They are asking people to submit up to 3 photos showing the fashions at any one wedding (the main image should focus on wedding dress).

I think this is a lovely idea and already seems to be generating a lot of buzz across craft, fashion, wedding blogs at least. Everyone loves a wedding...

[1961 - Wedding of Marianne Middleton and Brian Bayne]

Archival management - keep calm and carry on?

2009-04-15T10:47:00.005+01:00

Managing archive collections is a pretty essential part of running an archive and being an archivist. Software helps do this better and faster and open source alternatives have opened up the options of what has traditionally been a fairly small market.

First the background reading. There was a very good and comprehensive report by CLIR on archival management software published in January 2009. There is also a wiki which emerged as a result of that report which should hopefully be updated with new developments. Both these resources explain much better the whys and hows and criteria so I'm not going to do that. I'll just point and link.

First up is the Archivist's Toolkit which states that its "main goals are to support archival processing and production of access instruments, promote data standardization, promote efficiency, and lower training costs." List of users includes New York University Archives and The Martin Luther King, Jr. Archive.

Next we have Archon (not the directory) but another software which is intended to "automatically publishes archival descriptive information and digital archival objects in a user-friendly website." User example - College of William and Mary

CollectiveAccess is another option and bills itself as " full-featured collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections." User example - Museum of Jewish Heritage

Open source week

2009-04-14T11:05:00.003+01:00

I've been experimenting with open source software in my new job and now that I'm thinking about it I keep coming across exciting examples for the archive community so I'm going to make this week *open source week* ta da!!

See here for a full definition of what makes a software open source according to the open source initiative. Some of the examples I have may actually be classed as freeware or shareware (see here for an explaination of the differences) but the general concept is that software is developed and is free to use to varying degrees. Which makes it a very web 2.0 idea and particularly brilliant for small archives to experiment with.

Ships, trains and plans...

2009-03-25T22:16:00.006Z

Ships, trains and engines are going to be part of my life for the next two years in my new job and I've been considering how I can bring a little web 2.0 to my workplace so it has been nice to see the National Maritime Museum's blog and more recently their involvement in flickr commons for some inspiration.

Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person

2009-03-25T21:48:00.003Z

I discovered this brilliant animation today:

Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person

View more presentations from edsonm.

Talking version here

Archives 2.0 in the UK

2009-03-25T21:21:00.006Z

Archives Hub have posted a report on the conference held last week here. I wholeheartedly support Jane's outlook and approach to Archives 2.0 and I think the work that the Archives Hub has been done with

"an admirable sense of adventure, a sense of the missed opportunities that too much naval-gazing can bring about and also a general appreciation that if something takes relatively little time to do or to set up then it might be worth taking the plunge and seeing how it goes."

Archives 2.0 UK

2009-03-20T19:38:00.006Z

Was alerted to these tweets by ArchivesNext. They were live tweets from the conference Archives 2.0: Shifting Dialogues between Users and Archivists down in Manchester this week.

I think we'll be able to get a better idea of the conference from the ArchivesHub blog in the next week or so. However, its interesting to see twitter being used in this way and there are some useful links and thoughts about Archives 2.0 from the conference captured by twitter.

Book covers

2009-03-02T13:31:00.006Z

The book cover archive and its accompanying blog are really more of a personal interest thing but hey it has archive in the title so I thought I'd put it on here as a tenuous link and a little bit of Monday whimsy.

I thought it was interesting that the site allows users to search by typeface as well as by the expected designer, author, title and publisher fields. Typography is a key part of book cover design and an element that users would want to be able to search on and this functionality gives the site added value.

The site also has the ability to comment and submit information to the site editors about each book cover.

Archives and the economy

2009-02-12T12:39:00.008Z

An email on the NRA listserve from the National Council of Archives pointed me to this extract available from Hansard about the future of the Minton Archive of the Royal Doulton Ltd company.

As Lord Redesdale says in the extract this is not the first business archive that will have to be bought following the collapse of its parent company and it does make you wonder what will happen to these collections should other companies fall victim to the economic problems.

The debate mentions that the archive has been valued and will be marketed by Bonhams and the Lords are rightly concerned about the possibility of keeping the archive in the local area when the administrators must focus on getting the best price for it.

Is there anything that Archivists can do to help preserve business heritage and records? A draft National Strategy for Business Archives (England & Wales) was released in January this year and one of its recommendations at an individual level is for Archivists to work hard at developing networks of expertise and shared experience to help improve the handling of business records.

Is there a role for Web 2.0 to help foster communication and networks amongst professionals? Are the listserves and society meetings enough? I've certainly found that when searching for information about practical archive issues such as how to construct a catalogue, the best boxes to buy, procedures for handling accessions there is very little available information out there being shared. This probably leads to a lot of reinvention of the wheel by individuals and if you are working alone you're probably never quite sure if you're doing it right. I'd like to see a central resource of practical tips and templates, the SOA site does this to a certain extent but its hard to find what you are looking for and often the material is restricted to members only.

The draft strategy doesn't explicitly mention use of Web 2.0 tools as being part of the solution but I think they could help.

Back on the wagon

2009-02-06T10:51:00.005Z

Well I'm back on the blogging wagon, after a busy christmas and new year, starting a new job and reading too many craft blogs I'm ready to get back on board the Archives 2.0 wagon.

Image from Modesto Art Museum

I'm not sure I have the energy to twitter as well as blog and facebook but lots of other interesting Archivists can and do twitter via Digital Archivist.

Europeana

2008-12-26T15:34:00.002Z

Back in time for Christmas! Europeana is working again (when it launched in November the site crashed due to demand).

Europeana showcases over "two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archive documents, paintings and films."

Flickr is a winner

2008-12-18T19:40:00.006Z

Roy at HangingTogether brought my attention to this post on the Library of Congress blog about the success of their Flickr pilot project.

The full LC report is here but if you don't have time read the summary here.

Some stats from the pilot include:

Within 24 hours of its launch the LC account had 1.1 million total views
LC photos average approximately 500,000 views a month
They have received over 10 million total views
7,166 comments were left on 2,873 photos

This report is very positive about the whole experience, has some good advice in it and is a brilliant example of what Web 2.0 can do for you. Show it to your boss!

Archives Open - open for business

2008-12-08T17:47:00.005Z

David over at the Digital Archive has a new venture called Archives Open which is a

"new community-powered blog that focuses on archives, access, community and the Web... a platform to discuss Web 2.0 technologies and Web 2.0 ethics and values "

He has a nice post about the new blog and the reasons behind it here. I think it's a really good idea and a new way of using a blog to collect information from archivists and users about the Web 2.0 projects that are happening out there. It looks like it will build up into a handy resource and source of inspiration.

It's open for business now so get over there and check it out.

Youtube and government

2008-12-01T12:53:00.003Z

I read today that Obama is using youtube for his weekly addresses as president-elect and it made me wonder what the impact this high level endorsement of technology might have on its up-take by the average archive or archivist. (Incidently, the wonder of the Internet allows us to listen to Roosevelt's fireside chats and compare the two formats for ourselves.)

I did wonder whether this was going to be an area where the UK was slightly behind but it turns out the Prime Minister already has a youtube channel, with 500+ videos . There is also a UK parliament pilot channel on youtube. Who'd have thought it?

I wonder whether the use of these kinds of technology by government bodies will have an impact and make those organisations that have been more conservative and hesitant in their approach to Web 2.0 look again at them? Does it legitimise Web 2.0 activity?

BBC stops jokes

2008-11-26T16:30:00.000Z

The BBC Archive has put up some interesting stuff from WWII about Russian relations. It ties in with the BBC series World War II: Behind Closed Doors and features this series of memos on the subject of the appropriateness of jokes about Russia once they joined the conflict.

The Age of Normalization...

2008-11-24T09:52:00.009Z

Technorati published it's State of the Blogosphere report recently. This annual report from Technorati looks at the statistics and trends in the blogging world (blogosphere). Some of the stats seem crazy, 133 million blogs started since 2002, 900,000 posts a day and 94.1 million blog readers in America alone in 2007. For information about the UK blogosphere see this report from comScore.

One item in the Technorati report which caught my eye was a quote from Shel Israel about the blogosphere and what it now means:

Until recently, 'the Blogosphere' referred to a small cluster of geeks circled around a single tool. Now it refers to hundreds of millions of people using a vast warehouse of tools that allow people to behave increasingly online like they do in real life. We have entered the Age of Normalization in the Blogosphere.

The age of normalization - have we really reached the stage where blogs are a normal and routine communication channel? I don't know that we have, I'm the only person among my group of friends who reads blogs on a daily basis. Its not a very scientific argument I know but they are all daily users of the Internet, into Facebook etc but none of them are interested in blogs. I doubt that on a day to day basis reading blogs is a routine activity for the majority of people. However, what is clear from the figures involved is that blogs have a large, growing audience (41% of UK Internet audience) for whom blogs are a regular read. So, if you are in the business of communicating with people then blogs should be an important tool for you.

The useful thing about report like the Technorati one is that it helps to gain an idea of where blogging sits in the world of communications and whether its worth considering. As blogs do become normal you have to wonder whether it will seem particularly innovative for your archive to have one as well? Or if you don't have one will it be a disadvantage similar to that which not having a website was a couple of years ago? I don't think having or not having a blog will make or break the reputation of an archive but I think not having one is an opportunity missed to share your collections, update interested readers or bring to life records.

Too busy to Web 2.0?

2008-11-22T17:32:00.006Z

I've briefly touched on the issue of how much time it takes to do "web 2.0" before. Back then I linked to a post from the Museum 2.0 blog that I had found very useful. I started to think about this issue of time and what busy archivists can do again as I've been preparing an article for Arc on the subject of Web 2.0 and Archivists.

Taking inspiration from some nice diagrams here, I put together this image to accompany my article and thought I'd share my hard work cutting and pasting logos here on the blog. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I think it breaks up Web 2.0 activities nicely and shows how even with very little time its possible to dip your toe in the Web 2.0 world.

Breaking up "Web 2.0" into 3 main stages makes it less daunting as an activity. Checking out Wikipedia for references to your archive is easier and less scary than creating content and 'putting yourself out there'.

Before you start participating, creating content or building communities, my top tip would be investigate. Find out what level of web presence your organisation or collections have. Get a sense for what is out there and what works. Then participate - comment, amend, tag anything you find with your expert knowledge about the collection and link back to your own website (or blog, flickr pages etc if you you've also been busy creating.)

Web 2.0 Guidance

2008-11-21T16:58:00.005Z

Sometimes we all need a little guidance:

Finding guidance on how to start a blog isn't hard, it is more difficult to find something that addresses the issues that you might face if you're trying to do it for your organisation or answer questions from your boss.

That's why I was delighted to discover this excellent set of briefing documents from the folks at UKOLN on all things Web 2.0. They have lots on blogs and blogging and as its geared towards the cultural heritage sector it is more relevant than a lot of the advice out there about Web 2.0 in general.

At the moment they even have briefing papers on the use of blogs in libraries and museums so hopefully there will be one for archives soon...

Google and Life magazine

2008-11-19T12:56:00.008Z

Google has started to digitise and make available online the Life photo archive. This means according to the site that people can "search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today." Many of the images were never published and at the moment about 20% of the collection is available but the aim of the project is to make about 10 millions photos available in the next few months.

Archivist Lawrence D. Gurrin examining unidentified text.

My reaction to this was very much in the vein of 'oh, how interesting' but it did raise some interesting issues on the Records Management listserve. Some people asked whether digitising these images will mean that they are looked at any more and whether there was a danger of digitising just because we can.

What do you think? My view on this is 'why not?' Google obviously have the resources to do this and it makes what seems to be an excellent collection of images available very easily and I think it will become a great resource. I'd like to see some kind of user tagging function, at the moment you can only rate the images but this might follow.

Personally, I was a little disappointed with the response that this project got from some of the RM community, but maybe I'm overly enthusiastic about this type of thing. As a profession do you think that we have a tendency to be pessimistic about digital projects and struggle to see the point of them?

First World War Diaries

2008-11-11T20:57:00.005Z

Diaries as blogs can work really well and they are one of my favourite examples
of using Web 2.0 technologies to bring to life documents that might otherwise be forgotten or limited to family readership only.

Harry Lamin's letters from WWI
George C. Voegeli's (An American Infantryman in WWI Siberia and Beyond)
Edith Elizabeth Appleton

The Telegraph has an interesting article about the diary of Captain Alexander Stewart. This diary has been made available to download as an e-book and the Telegraph article has also allowed readers to share their own stories using the comments section online.

Armistace - 90 years on

2008-11-11T19:46:00.006Z

On the 90th anniversary, a selection of some of the offerings from World War One available on the Internet.
I've mentioned the Great War Archive project before, but this is the poetry section of their site which has a mixture of resources included biographies, poems and digital images of original sources like Wilfred Owen's citation for Military Cross.

At the moment The Times has several First World War related items on their archive pages, although this will change. Including this article from 11 November 1920 when the tomb of the Unknown Warrior was unveiled.

TNA Voices of the Armistice

To Remember

2008-11-11T08:30:00.007Z

The archive profession has the privilege and a duty to help preserve the remembrance of things past. Seeing the final 3 living veterans of the Great War out of 5 million British Armed Forces participants today emphasised that soon this tangible link with that conflict will be gone and only the records will remain to remember the sacrifices of that generation by.

Gunpowder, treason and plot

2008-11-05T00:01:00.008Z

Today is the 403rd anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. I thought I'd share this website put together as part of a project by the Parliamentary Archives, the History of Parliament Trust, the 24 Hour Museum, and developers Mackenzie Ward Research.

There is also a paper from the 2006 Museums and the Web conference which explains how the site came about and the process involved in creating an online resource like this.

If you haven't seen or heard of the Museums and the Web conference, it is worth checking out their website. Most of the papers from over 10 years of conferences are available online and it is an excellent resource for projects in the Museum and Archive world.

Love, love, love it

2008-11-04T15:27:00.004Z

I want one of these for archives. Check out the Library 2.0 idea generator taken from Dave Pattern's blog. It's been up a while but I just found it today.

What is Library 2.0? That's a post for another day but in the meantime:

Image taken from The Read/Write Web: Social Software and Libraries.

Halloween and Archives

2008-10-30T20:00:00.001Z

Working to a theme, I thought I'd do a bit of digging and see what was out there to do with "Halloween" type topics and archives. There are a suprising amount of halloween cartoons available online, some of them going back to the twenties (see here) and of course witches.

The Scottish witch-hunt in burgh records (a SCAN exhibition)
Horrors of The National Archives
Salem witch Trials (University of Virginia)

Halloween fun

2008-10-30T19:59:00.002Z

Brought to you via youtube some Halloween themed "archive" footage from Disney.

Mickey Mouse (1929)

Donald Duck (1954)

The ideas behind Archives 2.0

2008-10-23T16:19:00.006+01:00

Archives Next has started an interesting discussion about what Archives 2.0 means for the profession. Particularly when we start looking beyond the snazzy "new" technologies and think about the principles behind it.

What makes an Archive "Web 2.0" compliant? Is it just about having the right technologies or is it about your approach to your collections and a willingness to involve users and relinquish some control over the collections and their re-use?

This is a great post and got me thinking about the bigger ideas behind Web 2.0 for a change instead of all the great bits and bobs that are being achieved with the technology.

Changes

2008-10-12T21:22:00.004+01:00

To usher in autumn and because the pink style was doing my head in, I've change the look of the blog.

I think its cleaner and simpler so hopefully an improvement.

Fry on Web 2.0

2008-10-12T13:32:00.001+01:00

I thought it might be nice to hear what a national treasure has to say on the subject.

Understanding The Internet: Stephen Fry: Web 2.0

Rules of engagement

2008-10-05T14:31:00.004+01:00

I ended the presentation with 5 rules/guidelines that I thought would be useful to take away. Its not quite a Web 2.0 manifesto like the librarians have or the archivists but more of an approach to engaging with the ideas.

THINK about what you want to do. Many of these tools are very easy to use but enthusiasm for them can peter out if you don’t have a clear plan about what the tool will be used for and what content it will contain.

EXPERIMENT these tools are flexible and it should be easy to think of ways you could use content in new ways if you keep an open mind.

ENGAGE find out what your users know about collections and what the best way to capture this knowledge would be. What do your users want from you?

LEARN find out what has worked for museums and libraries, can we learn from them - yes!

ENJOY have fun with this. Web 2.0 tools are meant to be fun and give you freedom to experiment. They aren’t meant to replace traditional organisational channels of communication but they can complement them and allow you to say things and relax a bit more.

Podcast slide

2008-10-03T14:24:00.002+01:00

The fourth technology I looked at for the presentation was the podcast. As a tool podcasts require a little more thought, preparation and equipment than some of the other technologies so you will need:

Something to record onto
Audio editing software to make your podcast sound professional
A website to host it on, and link to other sites such as itunes

But for many archives I think they could be useful. Particularly if you regularly host talks and presentations. If you do then you can record these talks and make them available online. This immediately expands the potential audience and gives them control about when they listen to your content.

Blog slide

2008-10-01T20:38:00.003+01:00

I've already discussed blogs for archives in detail here so I don't want to repeat myself. When I was thinking about the presentation I wanted to get across that blogs are an accessible way to start experimenting with Web 2.0 and are a flexible in what they can be used for.

As a Web 2.0 tool they are very popular with over 15 million active blogs in 2007. However, there were actually 70 million blogs recorded in April 2007 which shows that a vast number of the blogs people start become inactive. The best way to avoid an inactive blog is to know what your blog is going to be for and to commit to making regular posts.

If you can do this then a blog will give you a more informal way to communicate regularly with readers. For archives, blogs can be a good way to publicise new collections/accession, an image of the month, small online exhibitions, diaries work well published as blogs and generally allow you to highlight treasures in your collections.

Ultimately blogs are a very accessible starter tool that can be used for a multitude of purposes and if it doesn’t work for you just delete it.