Where\u27s the Context? Enhancing Access to Digital Archives

Providing access to original materials is an ethical responsibility for all professional archivists. In the Code of Ethics for Archivists, access is the sixth tenet, stating that archivists not only provide equal and open access to records, they preserve the intellectual integrity of collections. In an analog environment, this responsibility is somewhat straightforward and uncomplicated. However, technology has advanced rapidly over the past decade, and digitization projects are at the forefront of library and archival news. In a digital world, the once-simple tasks of promoting access to original materials and preserving their intellectual integrity are far more complicated. Although digitization has the potential to increase greatly a repository’s patron base, complex decisions arise for archivists when contemplating this path. Institutions must expend more of their resources and staff to replicate digitally the value of analog collections. Many of these problems have been examined before, so I will address an issue that has been largely disregarded by archival literature: the necessity of placing digital collections within a broader social and historical context

Ausgewählte Metadatenstandards für Sondersammlungen

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit Metadatenstandards für Sondersammlungen. Ausgewählte Standards (DCCAP, DACS, CCO, EAD, Marbacher Memorandum) werden anhand einer beispielhaften Sammlung (Nachlass von Thomas Strittmatter) verglichen und hinsichtlich Ihrer Vor- und Nachteile analysiert. Maßgeblich für Analyse und Bewertung sind die Anforderungen, die Sondersammlungen generell an Beschreibungen stellen und besonders die Anforderungen der ausgewählten Sammlung und ihrer Objekte. Die ausgewählten Standards sind durch institutionelle Hintergründe und Traditionen geprägt, die sich dadurch auch auf die Beschreibungen auswirken. Anhand der ausgewählten Sammlung und ihrer Objekte wird deutlich, wo und wie Kompromisse in den Beschreibungen erforderlich werden. Im Vergleich der Beschreibungen werden außerdem auch Defizite der Standards erkennbar. Weitere Verschmelzung von traditioneller Praxis in Bibliotheken, Museen und Archiven und die entsprechende Überarbeitung von Standards sind notwendig

Like a Box of Chocolates: A Case Study of User-Contributed Content at Footnote

User-contributed content has been suggested as a means of narrowing the gap between the level of description that resource-constrained repositories are able to provide and the level that users need or have come to expect. An examination of the experience of entities with large-scale online collections of cultural heritage materials that allow users to contribute content can provide valuable insight to other institutions that are considering doing so. This case study examines 183 users and 1,495 instances of user-contributed content at Footnote. The study identifies individuals with family connections as the largest group of contributors while annotations are the most common type of contribution. The data suggests that users' are predominately interested in information about individuals. Additionally, the study reveals the existence of users who contribute a disproportionate number of annotations. The findings of the study also indicate issues of consistency, authenticity, and context with regard to user-contributed content

State of the Union Archives: Labor History and Archival Description on the World Wide Web

This paper reports on how archives employ electronic finding aids and other online resources to provide access to labor history materials. It includes an annotated listing, or webliography, of fifty-five repositories with distinct or significant holdings in labor history that have Web sites. The webliography illustrates great diversity in site features, structure, and function. A survey of a cross-section of archival professionals provides information unavailable from analysis of the Web sites. Questions emphasized collection development, the creation and use of online description, and ongoing or future projects. Fifteen archivists participated in the survey. The survey revealed that collection development has slowed since the 1960s and 1970s with more emphasis on corporate business collections. Web authoring skills remain mainly self-taught, or borrowed from other staff and outside agencies. Nearly all of the archivists who responded claimed their Web sites had expanded interest in and use of their labor collections. Finding aids remain a priority in developing online resources, and the use of Encoded Archival Description continues to grow, albeit slowly

Navigating the Web Archives: A Study of Users' Understanding of Context

Web archiving is a rapidly growing area of electronic records archiving, with third-party service providers developing comprehensive Web archiving solutions. Currently in the United States, there are two major Web archiving services being used, the Internet Archive's Archive-It and OCLC's Web Archives Workbench. These two services are based, respectively on the "technocentric" and "archival" approaches to archiving Web sites, underlying which are specific assumptions about the nature of capturing, managing, and providing access to this type of archival material. Focusing on how these approaches affect the access and presentation methods supported by Archive-It and the Web Archives Workbench, this paper describes a study conducted at the North Carolina State Archives and Library that tested the effect of the two methods on users' understanding of contextual information. Study participants' responses indicate that the "archival" model may provide users with a better understanding of a records context, but that generally users are confident about their ability to understand the records regardless of access methods. Nevertheless, despite these high levels of confidence, participants in this study did not necessarily have a good understanding of the nature of materials captured and archived directly from the Internet. The results of this study also demonstrate that users would like to have contextual information built into document displays, whether in the form of a header containing appropriate metadata or in the documents themselves