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Abstract
This study analyzes the representation systems of three digitized archival collections using the traditional archival representation framework of provenance, order, and content. The results of the study reveal a prominent role of provenance representation, a compromised role of order representation, and an active role of content representation in digital archives. The findings of the study highlight the challenges faced by the archival community to preserve archival context and at the same time expand archival accessibility in the digital environment.
Notes
1. In a review of the evolution of digital libraries, Edward A. Fox and Shalini R. Urs identifed computational, networking, and presentation technologies as key technologies that have helped the early visions of a world repository of knowledge to become reality. Edward A Fox and Shalini R. Urs, “Digital Libraries,” in Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 36, ed. Blaise Cronin, (Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2002), 505–506.
2. Ricky Erway and Jennifer Schaffner, “Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get into the Flow,” report inspired by the “Digitization Matters” forum held in August 2007 by the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and produced by OCLC Programs and Research. Published online at http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2007-02.pdf.
3. The Alaska Virtual Library and Digital Archives, “About Alaska's Digital Archives,” retrieved July 28, 2011, from http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm4/about.php.
4. The California Digital Library, “Online Archive of California (OAC),” and “Calisphere,” retrieved July 28, 2011, from http://www.cdlib.org/services/dsc/calisphere/ and http://www.cdlib.org/services/dsc/oac/.
5. For example, the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum's “Access to a Legacy” initiative, retrieved July 28, 2011, from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Search-the-Digital-Archives/Access-to-a-Legacy.aspx, and National Archives and Records Administration's draft Plan for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007–2016, retrieved July 28, 2011, from http://www.archives.gov/comment/nara-digitizing-plan.pdf.
6. Richard J. Cox and the University of Pittsburgh Archives Students, “Machines in the Archives: Technology and the Coming Transformation of Archival Reference,” First Monday 12, no. 11 (2007), from http://www.firstmonday.org/ntbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2029/1894.
7. Catherine Stollar Peters, “When Not All Papers Are Paper: A Case Study in Digital Archivy,” Provenance XXIV (2006): 23–35.
8. Catherine O’Sullivan, “Diaries, On-Line Diaries, and the Future Loss to Archives; or, Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers Who Blog Them,” American Archivist 68 (2005): 71.
9. Louise Corti, “Re-Using Archived Qualitative Data—Where, How, Why?” Archival Science 7 (2007): 41.
10. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, Online Historical Documents, retrieved July 28, 2011 from, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/collections/documents.html.
11. Dorothy Morehead Hill Collection, retrieved July 28, 2011 from, http://eagle.csuchico.edu/.
12. Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections, retrieved July 28, 2011 from, http://polarbears.si.umich.edu/.
13. Michael Cook, The Management of Information from Archives, 2nd ed. (Aldershot, Hampshire, England; Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1999): 130–132; Margaret Procter and Michael Cook, Manual of Archival Description, 3rd ed. (Aldershot, Hampshire, England; Brookfield, VT: Gower, 2000): 7–10.
14. Elizabeth Yakel, “Archival Representation,” Archival Science 3 (2003): 1–25.
15. Geoffrey Yeo, “Concepts of Record (1): Evidence, Information, and Persistent Representations,” American Archivist 70 (2007): 315–482. Yeo, “Concepts of Record (2): Prototypes and Boundary Objects,” American Archivist 71 (2008): 118–143.
16. Paul Conway, “Modes of Seeing: Digitized Photographic Archives and the Experienced User,” American Archivist 73 (2010): 425–462.
17. Jay F. Rosenberg, Linguistic Representation (Boston, MA: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981): 1.
18. Donald A. Norman, Things that Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993): 43.
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20. Researchers consider information representation biased because its construction reflects a particular world-view and means to meet specific purposes. Representation is also a more or less incomplete view of things being represented and something is always lost in the representation process. Wendy M. Duff and Verne Harris, “Stories and Names: Archival Description as Narrating Records and Constructing Meaning,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 275–276.
21. David C. Blair, Language and Representation in Information Retrieval (Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1990): vii.
22. Heting Chu, Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age (Medford, NJ: Published for the American Society for Information Science and Technology by Information Today, 2003): 45.
23. According to the International Council on Archives, “the purpose of archival description is to identify and explain the context and content of archival material in order to promote its accessibility. This is achieved by creating accurate and appropriate representations and by organizing them in accordance with predetermined models.” ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description (Ottawa: International Council on Archives, 2000): 7.
24. Terry Eastwood, “General Introduction,” in The Archival Fonds: From Theory to Practice (Ottawa, Canada: Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards, 1992): 5.
25. Michel Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des Fonds in Archival Science,” Archivaria 16 (1983): 66.
26. Paul Brunton and Tim Robinson, “Arrangement and Description,” in Judith Ellis, ed., Keeping Archives 2nd ed. (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Canada: D. W. Thorpe, in association with the Australian Society of Archivists, 1993): 225.
27. Shelley Sweeney, “The Ambiguous Origins of the Archival Principle of ‘Provenance’,” Libraries & the Cultural Record 43 (2008): 204.
28. Peter Horsman, “Taming the Elephant: An Orthodox Approach to the Principle of Provenance,” in The Principle of Provenance: Report from the First Stockholm Conference on Archival Theory and the Principle of Provenance, 2–3 September 1993 (Stockholm: Swedish National Archives, 1994): 54–55.
29. Kent M. Haworth, “Archival Description: Content and Context in Search of Structure,” in Daniel V. Pitti and Wendy M. Duff, eds., Encoded Archival Description on the Internet (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press, 2001): 9.
30. Heather MacNeil, “The Context is All: Describing a Fonds and its Parts in Accordance with the Rules for Archival Description,” in The Archival Fonds: From Theory to Practice (Ottawa, Canada: Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards, 1992): 214–215.
31. Haworth, “Archival Description,”13.
32. Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,” 66.
33. Brunton and Robinson, “Arrangement and Description,” Keeping Archives, 223.
34. Hilary Jenkinson, A Manual of Archive Administration (London: P. Lund, Humphries, 1965): 101.
35. Joseph Deodato, “Becoming Responsible Mediators: The Application of Postmodern Perspectives to Archival Arrangement & Description,” Progressive Librarian 27 (2006): 55.
36. Peter Horsman, “The Last Dance of the Phoenix, or the De-discovery of the Archival Fonds,” Archivaria 54 (2002): 14.
37. Duchein, “Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems,” 69.
38. Peter Scott, “The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment,” American Archivist 29 (1966): 497.
39. Chris Hurley, “Parallel Provenance: (2) When Something is not Related to Everything Else,” Archives and Manuscripts 33, no. 2 (2005): 52–91.
40. Horsman, “The Last Dance of the Phoenix,” 16.
41. Laura Millar, “The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time,” Archivaria 53 (2002): 1-15.
42. Horsman, “The Last Dance of the Phoenix,” 22.
43. Michael J. Fox and Peter L. Wilkerson, Introduction to Archival Organization and Description (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Information Institute, 1998): 5.
44. Richard H. Lytle, “Intellectual Access to Archives: I. Provenance and Content Indexing Methods of Subject Retrieval,” American Archivist 43 (1980): 64, 71.
45. Heather MacNeil, “Metadata Strategies and Archival Description: Comparing Apples to Oranges,” Archivaria 39 (1995): 30.
46. Peter Morville, Ambient Findability (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2005): 150.
47. Tom Nesmith, “Archival Studies in English-speaking Canada and the North American Rediscovery of Provenance,” in Canadian Archival Studies and the Rediscovery of Provenance (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993): 3.
48. Terry Cook, “The Concept of the Archival Fonds: Theory, Description, and Provenance in the Post-Custodial Era,” in The Archival Fonds: From Theory to Practice (Ottawa, Canada: Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards, 1992): 35.
49. Eastwood, “General Introduction,” in The Archival Fonds: From Theory to Practice, 3.
50. Ibid., 8.
51. Oliver W. Holmes, “Archival Arrangement—Five Different Operations at Five Different Levels,” American Archivist 27 (1964): 30.
52. Ibid., 33.
53. Cook, The Management of Information from Archives, 102.
54. Horsman, “Taming the Elephant,” 56.
55. Mary Jo Pugh, “The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivist,” American Archivist 45 (1982): 34.
56. Ibid.
57. Fox and Wilkerson, Introduction to Archival Organization and Description, 6.
58. Brunton and Robinson, “Arrangement and Description,” Keeping Archives, 226–227.
59. Frank Boles, “Disrespecting Original Order,” American Archivist 45 (1982): 29–30.
60. T. R. Schellenberg, The Management of Archives, 101–102.
61. John M. Budd, “Relevance: Language, Semantics, Philosophy,” Library Trends 52 (2004): 458.
62. Pugh, “The Illusion of Omniscience,” 38.
63. Lionel Bell, “Controlled Vocabulary Subject Indexing in Archives,” Journal of the Society of Archivists 5 (1973): 285.
64. Richard H. Lytle, “Intellectual Access to Archives: I,” 64, 73.
65. Richard H. Lytle, “Intellectual Access to Archives: II. Report of an Experiment Comparing Provenance and Content Indexing Methods of Subject Retrieval,” American Archivist 43 (1980): 193.
66. David A. Bearman and Richard H. Lytle, “The Power of the Principle of Provenance,” Archivaria 21 (1985–1986): 21–22.
67. Richard C. Berner and Uli Haller, “Principles of Archival Inventory Construction,” American Archivist 47 (1984): 136.
68. Cook, The Management of Information from Archives, 131.
69. Pugh, “The Illusion of Omniscience,” 44.
70. Wendy M. Duff and Kent M. Haworth, “The Reclamation of Archival Description: The Canadian Perspective,” Archivia 31 (1990–1991): 27.
71. The Subject Indexing Working Group of the Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards, Subject Indexing for Archives (Ottawa, Canada: Bureau of Canadian Archivists, 1992): 37.
72. Jackie M. Dooley, “Subject Indexing in Context,” American Archivist 55 (1992): 344.
73. Helena Zinkham, Patricia D. Cloud, and Hope Mayo, “Providing Access by Form of Material, Genre, and Physical Characteristics: Benefits and Techniques,” American Archivist 52 (1989): 300.
74. Rita L. H. Czeck, “Archival MARC Records and Finding Aids in the Context of End-User Subject Access to Archival Collections,” American Archivist 61 (1998): 438.
75. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, “Online Historical Documents,” retrieved July 28, 2011, from http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/collections/documents.html.
76. Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico, “About the Collection,” The Dorothy Morehead Hill Collection. Retrieved July 28, 2011 from http://eagle.csuchico.edu/about/index.asp.
77. Ibid.
78. Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections. Retrieved July 28, 2011, from http://polarbears.si.umich.edu/index.pl?node_id=272&lastnode_id=353.
79. Elizabeth Yakel, Seth Shaw, and Polly Reynolds, “Creating the Next Generation of Archival Finding Aids.” D-Lib Magazine 13, nos. 5-6 (2007), from http://www.dlib.org/may07/yakel.html.
80. Ibid.
81. The project Web site announced a plan to add some new features in the near future, including search and browse of item-level descriptions. Retrieved July 28, 2011, from http://polarbears.si.umich.edu/index.pl?node=coming%20soon&lastnode_id=272.
82. Kathleen D. Roe, Arranging & Describing Archives & Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005): 87.
83. S. R. Ranganathan, Colon Classification (Madras, India: The Madras Library Association; London, UK: Goldston, 1933).
84. S. R. Ranganathan, A Descriptive Account of the Colon Classification (Bombay & New York: Asia Publishing House, 1967).
85. B. C. Vickery, Faceted Classification Schemes (New Brunswick, NJ: Graduate School of Library Services at Rutgers University, 1966).
86. Kathryn La Barre, The Use of Faceted Analytico-Synthetic Theory as Revealed in the Practice of Website Construction and Design, Ph.D. Dissertation, the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, June 2006.
87. Kathryn La Barre, “Faceted Navigation and Browsing Features in New OPACs: Robust Support for Scholarly Information Seeking?” Knowledge Organization 34 (2007): 78-90.
88. David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (New York: Three Times Books, 2007).
89. Ibid., 18.
90. Ann Pederson, “Unlocking Hidden Treasures through Description: Comments on Archival Voyages of Discovery,” Archivaria 37 (1994): 52.
91. Steven L. Hensen, “Archival Cataloging and the Internet: The Implications and Impact of EAD,” in Daniel V. Pitti and Wendy M. Duff, eds., Encoded Archival Description on the Internet (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press, 2001): 75.