Recognizing Co-Creators in Four Configurations: Critical Questions for Web Archiving

Four categories of co-creator shape web archivists\u27 practice and influence the development of web archives: social forces, users and uses, subjects of web archives, and technical agents. This paper illustrates how these categories of co-creator overlap and interact in four specific web archiving contexts. It recommends that web archivists acknowledge this complex array of contributors as a way to imagine web archives differently. A critical approach to web archiving recognizes relationships and blended roles among stakeholders; seeks opportunities for non-extractive archival activity; and acknowledges the value of creative reuse as an important aspect of preservation

Writing the Docs Honestly

Presentation at the Council of State Archivists / National Association of Government Archives & Records Administrators / Society of American Archivists 2018 Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. Featured in a panel discussion titled, Opening the Black Box: Transparency and Complexity in Digital Preservation, with co-panelists, Erin Baucom, Jessica Tieman, Elizabeth England, and Kyna Herzinger.In this presentation, I reflect on the centrality of documentation to digital preservation work and – drawing on work by Jennifer Douglas, Sara Ahmed, and the Write the Docs community – propose four guidelines for writing more "honest" documentation

Personal Digital Archiving at the Public Library

Public library programs and services increasingly bring personal digital archiving and do-it-yourself digital conversion into public spaces. What are the values and impacts of such resources? What role, if any, does public memory play in these personal practices? This poster reports on findings from interviews with District of Columbia Public Library patrons and staff about their experiences with these emerging spaces and resources

Using the Memory Lab: Values, Impacts, and Discourses

Personal digital archiving is how individuals accumulate, organize, store, and preserve digital possessions in their personal lives. New initiatives like the Memory Lab at the DC Public Library increasingly bring DIY digital conversion and preservation practices into public spaces. In order to study the values and impacts of such services and the discourses they activate, I interviewed 13 library staff and patrons about their experiences with personal digital archiving resources at DCPL. Interviewees emphasized values and impacts such as access to resources and the library's role in supporting digital literacy, as well as obstacles to participation including the difficulty of learning new skills and technologies. A critical discourse analysis of one interview reveals additional discourses at play: personal digital archiving at the public library can be valued as a resource for managing (having power over) change, a means of re-situating identity, and a vehicle for (re)imagining the future. This research contributes to our understanding of the narratives and attitudes that shape emerging personal digital archiving practices

A Work in Progress: Improving Labor Practices in Digital Libraries

Interactive session presented at the UMD Libraries Research and Innovative Practice Forum, June 11, 2019.Labor sustains cultural heritage and yet it is undervalued across libraries, archives, and museums (LAM). LAMs furthermore normalize contingency through practices like using short-term funding to create short-term positions in support of long-term programs and services. Conversations about labor practices and workers’ well-being in LAM often frame these issues as individual concerns. However, the impacts of LAM labor practices spread beyond the growing number of undervalued, invisible, and contingent workers that characterizes this field. In academic libraries, for example, workers with job protections (such as non-contingent faculty status) face mounting workloads as they find themselves unable to support and retain talented colleagues. These protected workers may also find it difficult to scale down their units’ responsibilities, even as undervalued and contingent workers depart. And when library workers depart or become burned out, what becomes of libraries’ ability to sustain access to information, teaching and learning, and high-quality research collections? In this session, we’ll discuss our recent work with the Digital Library Federation Working Group on Labor in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Museums (https://wiki.diglib.org/Labor), which focuses on two research areas: foregrounding the experiences of contingent and precarious workers; and developing a research agenda for valuing labor. We’ll briefly review each research activity in the first half of the session and devote the second half to discussion with participants. This session will be interactive but we hope you’ll stay

Getting to Know FRED: Introducing Workflows for Born-Digital Content

Presentation from the MARAC conference in Roanoke, VA on October 7–10, 2015. S6 - Digital Archives: New Colleagues, New Solutions

Correction: Membranes Linked by Trans-Snare Complexes Require Lipids Prone to Non-Bilayer Structure for Progression to Fusion

Like other intracellular fusion events, the homotypic fusion of yeast vacuoles requires a Rab GTPase, a large Rab effector complex, SNARE proteins which can form a 4-helical bundle, and the SNARE disassembly chaperones Sec17p and Sec18p. In addition to these proteins, specific vacuole lipids are required for efficient fusion in vivo and with the purified organelle. Reconstitution of vacuole fusion with all purified components reveals that high SNARE levels can mask the requirement for a complex mixture of vacuole lipids. At lower, more physiological SNARE levels, neutral lipids with small headgroups that tend to form non-bilayer structures (phosphatidylethanolamine, diacylglycerol, and ergosterol) are essential. Membranes without these three lipids can dock and complete trans -SNARE pairing but cannot rearrange their lipids for fusion

Minimal Membrane Docking Requirements Revealed by Reconstitution of Rab GTPase-Dependent Membrane Fusion from Purified Components

Rab GTPases and their effectors mediate docking, the initial contact of intracellular membranes preceding bilayer fusion. However, it has been unclear whether Rab proteins and effectors are sufficient for intermembrane interactions. We have recently reported reconstituted membrane fusion that requires yeast vacuolar SNAREs, lipids, and the homotypic fusion and vacuole protein sorting (HOPS)/class C Vps complex, an effector and guanine nucleotide exchange factor for the yeast vacuolar Rab GTPase Ypt7p. We now report reconstitution of lysis-free membrane fusion that requires purified GTP-bound Ypt7p, HOPS complex, vacuolar SNAREs, ATP hydrolysis, and the SNARE disassembly catalysts Sec17p and Sec18p. We use this reconstituted system to show that SNAREs and Sec17p/Sec18p, and Ypt7p and the HOPS complex, are required for stable intermembrane interactions and that the three vacuolar Q-SNAREs are sufficient for these interactions

Sec17 Can Trigger Fusion of Trans-SNARE Paired Membranes without Sec18

Sec17 [soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor (NSF) attachment protein; α-SNAP] and Sec18 (NSF) perform ATP-dependent disassembly of cis-SNARE complexes, liberating SNAREs for subsequent assembly of trans-complexes for fusion. A mutant of Sec17, with limited ability to stimulate Sec18, still strongly enhanced fusion when ample Sec18 was supplied, suggesting that Sec17 has additional functions. We used fusion reactions where the four SNAREs were initially separate, thus requiring no disassembly by Sec18. With proteoliposomes bearing asymmetrically disposed SNAREs, tethering and trans-SNARE pairing allowed slow fusion. Addition of Sec17 did not affect the levels of trans-SNARE complex but triggered sudden fusion of trans-SNARE paired proteoliposomes. Sec18 did not substitute for Sec17 in triggering fusion, but ADP- or ATPγS-bound Sec18 enhanced this Sec17 function. The extent of the Sec17 effect varied with the lipid headgroup and fatty acyl composition of the proteoliposomes. Two mutants further distinguished the two Sec17 functions: Sec17(L291A,L292A) did not stimulate Sec18 to disassemble cis-SNARE complex but triggered the fusion of trans-SNARE paired membranes. Sec17(F21S,M22S), with diminished apolar character to its hydrophobic loop, fully supported Sec18-mediated SNARE complex disassembly but had lost the capacity to stimulate the fusion of trans-SNARE paired membranes. To model the interactions of SNARE-bound Sec17 with membranes, we show that Sec17, but not Sec17(F21S,M22S), interacted synergistically with the soluble SNARE domains to enable their stable association with liposomes. We propose a model in which Sec17 binds to trans-SNARE complexes, oligomerizes, and inserts apolar loops into the apposed membranes, locally disturbing the lipid bilayer and thereby lowering the energy barrier for fusion

Yeast Vacuolar HOPS, Regulated by its Kinase, Exploits Affinities for Acidic Lipids and Rab:GTP for Membrane Binding and to Catalyze Tethering and Fusion

Fusion of yeast vacuoles requires the Rab GTPase Ypt7p, four SNAREs (soluble N-ethylmaleimide–sensitive factor attachment protein receptors), the SNARE disassembly chaperones Sec17p/Sec18p, vacuolar lipids, and the Rab-effector complex HOPS (homotypic fusion and vacuole protein sorting). Two HOPS subunits have direct affinity for Ypt7p. Although vacuolar fusion has been reconstituted with purified components, the functional relationships between individual lipids and Ypt7p:GTP have remained unclear. We now report that acidic lipids function with Ypt7p as coreceptors for HOPS, supporting membrane tethering and fusion. After phosphorylation by the vacuolar kinase Yck3p, phospho-HOPS needs both Ypt7p:GTP and acidic lipids to support fusion