digitizing archival records of a professional association: benefits and challenges
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SEMINAR: Managing digitisation for societies, researchers, and institutionsState Library User Organisation Council, 10th May 2014
Digitising archival records of a professional association: benefits and challenges
Steven Chang
Former research assistant at the University of Melbourne
Medical Librarian at Western Health Library Services
What I’ll be speaking about…
✤ The project: why, how, and who...?
✤ The records: what’s being digitised?
✤ The challenges and lessons
The Project
✤ ARC-funded Linkage Grant
✤ CPA Australia
✤ Project partners: Australian National University, Ballarat & Deakin Universities, University of Melbourne, National Archives of Australia
The Project (Aims)
✤ Develop a system for appraising, digitising, and improving archival access to CPA Australia’s collections
✤ Develop guidelines and tools for future digitisation projects
✤ Create framework for a national business archive
The records - CPA Australia archives
✤ One of the oldest professional accounting associations in the world
✤ Significance: it highlights the social history and trends in the historical development of the discipline
✤ Broad applicability, social custodian of the accounting profession’s collective memory
Which file format?
✤ Industry standards
✤ Why 300 DPI resolution? Preserves detail, colour, complexities – but file sizes within reasonable limits
✤ Preservation files (TIFF) vs working copies (PDF / JPEG)
Appraisal
✤ Itemised appraisal = granularity down to item level
✤ Results in increased findability
✤ Enables initiatives such as “series” based classification and unique subject headings
✤ Enriches possibilities for integration of metadata
Retention & Disposal Authority
✤ Which records do we digitise?
✤ Selection matrix tool - criteria for selecting records for digitisation
✤ Adapt these tools to the situation
✤ Be mindful of users and usability! Consider accompanying documentation, notes, or glossary
Case study - historical exam analysis
✤ Objective: Mapping pedagogical trends in accounting from the 1900s to 1950s
✤ Demonstrated the power of remote access to online archival collections
Case study - Dead Sea Scrolls
✤ Ten Commandments, book of Genesis, oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible
✤ Access on a new scale – discoverable by web search for researchers all around the world
✤ Infra-red/multi-spectral imaging enables hidden words to be viewed, not typically visible in natural light
✤ Google Cultural Institute: Digitizing the Biblical Manuscripts http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/deadseascroll/
Case study - topic modeling
✤ Mapping colonial attitudes towards American-Indians via digitisation of 18-19th century newspapers
✤ Digital archives enable not just increased access, but entirely new methods of analysis
✤ Tracking relationship between gender and race in colonial society over time
✤ Sharon, B. "Doing More with Digitization: An introduction to topic modeling of early American sources." Common-Place 6(2). http://www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-02/tales/
Challenges - digital storage
✤ You WILL run out of space if you do not PREPARE your digital repository rigorously
✤ How large are your files?
✤ What is the scope of the project?
✤ KNOW these answers. Plan and calculate accordingly.
Challenges - staffing
✤ Avoid perils of ad-hoc staffing resources & scheduling
✤ Important to secure dedicated staffing resources
✤ Communicate and plan with relevant stakeholders about how you will make this happen
Challenges - technology
✤ Who can solve these problems promptly? Be prepared to dedicate resources to troubleshooting!
✤ We live in a world of continuous digital revolution
✤ So how do we “Future Proof” access to material? (Maybe we can’t. Are we asking the right question?)
✤ “Anti-fragile” environments – benefiting from technological instability and uncertainty (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) http://www.hughrundle.net/tag/antifragility/
Challenges - Intellectual Property, copyright, and legal issues✤ Copyright and IP issues are one of the most
potentially deadly threats to digitisation projects
✤ Can wreck projects, cost months/years of progress
✤ Communicate with stakeholders, find ways around the issue
✤ Take away lesson: consult experts, anticipate where copyright issues will spring up
Where to from here?
✤ Project being expanded on, into a federated national/international framework
✤ Unite disparate records
✤ Digitally fuse together physically isolated records
✤ Enrich human narratives and story-telling
Resources and references
✤ VALA14 conference session on the project http://www.vala.org.au/vala2014-proceedings/vala2014-session-1-ludekens
✤ VIDEO: Kerrie Ludeken’s VALA14 conference talk
✤ Kerrie Ludeken’s VALA14 paper [PDF]
✤ Australian Copyright Council: www.copyright.org.au
Resources and references
✤ CiteULike: my collection of scholarly literature on digitisation (total of 260 citations of journal articles):http://www.citeulike.org/user/Infoseer
✤ Digitisation project website: Centre for Accounting & Industry Partnerships (UNDER CONSTRUCTION 18/05/14)http://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/accounting/caip
✤ Bettington, Jackie, 1968- and Australian Society of Archivists (2008). Keeping Archives (3rd ed). Australian Society of Archivists Inc, Dickson, A.C.T.
Resources and references
✤ Chang, S., Keneley, M., Potter, B. and West, B. (2014), Digitising Archival Records: Benefits and Challenges for a Large Accounting Association [to be published mid-2014]
✤ Cobbin, P., Dean, G., Esslemont, C., Ferguson, P., Keneley, M., Potter, B. and West, B. (2013), Enhancing the Accessibility of Accounting and Business Archives: The Role of Technology in Informing Research in Accounting and Business. Abacus, 49: 396–422. doi: 10.1111/abac.12009
Resources and references
✤ Google Cultural Instititute: Digitizing the Biblical Manuscripts http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/deadseascroll/
✤ Sharon, B. "Doing More with Digitization: An introduction to topic modeling of early American sources." Common-Place 6(2). http://www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-02/tales/
Steven Chang
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: au.linkedin.com/in/stevenchang1/
Twitter: @InfoSeer -> www.twitter.com/Infoseer
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/StevenPChang
CiteULike: http://www.citeulike.org/user/Infoseer
Image attribution
✤ [Creative Commons] Interlock MCLS Digitization Tour by bert_m_b (contact)
✤ [Creative Commons] Digitization of an unpublished manuscript of a participant of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia at the Centre for Retrospective Digitization, Göttingen, Germany by Frank Schulenburg