does the digital change anything?

Valerie Johnson and David Thomas

Does the Digital Change Anything ?

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TNA’s planned intake of records over the next 5 years (Tb)

• Government web archive 73.8• Home guard records 113.3• RAF records 3.3• Navy 24.4• Army pre 1895 78• Army post 1895 48• National Registration 12• Olympics 20• Other digitisation 57.2• Born digital records 13.5• Total 458.9

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Sources of funding for digitisation

•Institutions

•Funding bodies

•Academic publishers

•Family History publishers

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Spending on digitisation £ Million

Academic

NOF Digi (1999 – 2003) 50

JISC (2004 – 2011) 27.5

AHRC (2000 – 2007) 42

Wellcome (2011 – 2012) 18

BL No response

Total 137

Commercial

TNA via partners 50

BL No response

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So, is there a break with the past or a continuum ?

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Break... ?

• Loss of the physical record and its implications• New types of records: audio stream, websites• Problems of authenticity, provenance and originality• Problem of records as unchanging versus 'website as

performance'• Some records can't exist in physical format: shareholding

registers. Is this the end of the record? • Consequently the end of the archive? All is information

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or...continuum ?

• Overlapping technologies: data not replacing paper, but co-existing

• Emails = simply like letters• Medium of records changes, but not the concept• Some records always dynamic: datasets; records of

shareholdings, medical records

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Digitisation : implications

• Privileging of access• Silent mass of undigitised• Weird eclectic mix• Non-paper records• Loss of physical and visual• Digitised records – what are they ?

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Search and research I

• Discovery: when items are born digital and delivered online, where does the catalogue end and the document begin ?

• Search: now massively important as selection disappears• Collaboration possible• Research questions: are they changing?• Rapid interrogation of large scale data for the first time• Analysis of trends across data rather than individual• New types of presentation and manipulation eg

visualisation

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Search and research II

Once again, there exists a different narrative:• Loss of expertise ?• Failure to use ?• Failure to join up resources ?

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Welcomed with open arms, or an impasse of resistance ?

• Self-limiting beliefs at an individual level• Self-limiting beliefs at a community level• The privileging of the original: sentimentality or reality ?

At the same time:Digital humanities is deliberately exploiting new technologies

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So what is the way forward ?

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Conclusion: Brave New World ?

• Mixed economy • New standards and definitions• Reassurance on persistence• Coherent vision of joined-up resources• Mainstreaming of Digital Humanities?

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