![Sample our Museum and Heritage Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5945/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Museum-Heritage-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Cultural heritage professionals use descriptive metadata as a tool to manage and mediate access to the memory texts in their custody. With digital and networking technologies exploding the possibilities for capturing recorded memories and memorialising lives, loves and losses, they can, and should, revolutionise our recordkeeping metadata management frameworks. Embracing the ‘archival turn’ requires relinquishing our role as the dominant descriptive storyteller, but are our current descriptive models and systems a barrier rather than a facilitator of such a transformation? In this paper the author adopts an autoethnographical approach to explore her experience of developing archival systems since the advent of the Web in the mid-1990s. The story involves a range of metadata schemas and models, questioning their ability to enable the design of interfaces to recorded knowledge and memories that tap into and unleash the dynamic capabilities of the new technologies and their potential to reflect a multiplicity of voices. The paper will contribute to the growing body of literature about the role of archival professionals in shaping recorded memory through their standards and practices, challenging our image as merely silent partners and neutral players.
Notes
1. David Bearman, ‘Record-Keeping Systems’, Archivaria, no. 36, Autumn 1993, pp. 16–37; Terry Cook, ‘Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modernist Era’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 22, no. 2, November 1994, pp. 300–29; Margaret Hedstrom, ‘Descriptive Practices for Electronic Records: Deciding What is Essential and Imagining What is Possible’, Archivaria, no. 36, Autumn 1993, pp. 53–63; Frank Upward, Sue McKemmish and Barbara Reed, ‘Archivists and Changing Social and Information Spaces: A Continuum Approach to Recordkeeping and Archiving in Online Cultures’, Archivaria, no. 72, Fall 2011, pp. 197–237; Terry Cook, ‘“We Are What We Keep; We Keep What We Are”: Archival Appraisal Past, Present and Future’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, vol. 32, no. 2, 2011, pp. 173–89, doi:10.1080/00379816.2011.619688.
2. Anne J Gilliland and Sue McKemmish, ‘Recordkeeping Metadata, the Archival Multiverse, and Societal Grand Challenges’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications 2012, 2012, available at <http://dcevents.dublincore.org/index.php/IntConf/dc-2012/paper/view/108>, accessed 27 September 2012.
3. Andrew Flinn, ‘Independent Community Archives and Community-Generated Content “Writing, Saving and Sharing Our Histories”’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 16, no 1, 1 February 2010, pp. 39–51, doi:10.1177/1354856509347707; Andrew Flinn, Mary Stevens and Elizabeth Shepherd, ‘Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream’, Archival Science, vol. 9, nos 1–2, October 2009, pp. 71–86, doi:10.1007/s10502-009-9105-2; Alexandra Eveleigh, ‘Welcoming the World: An Exploration of Participatory Archives’, presented at the ICA Congress 2012, Brisbane, 2012, available at <http://www.ica2012.com/files/pdf/Full%20papers%20upload/ica12Final00128.pdf>, accessed 7 May 2013; Isto Huvila, ‘Participatory Archive: Towards Decentralised Curation, Radical User Orientation, and Broader Contextualisation of Records Management’, Archival Science, vol. 8, no. 1, March 2008, pp. 15–36, doi:10.1007/s10502-008-9071-0; Katie Shilton and Ramesh Srinivasan, ‘Participatory Appraisal and Arrangement for Multicultural Archival Collections’, Archivaria, no. 63, Spring 2007, pp. 87–101.
4. Sue McKemmish et al., ‘Describing Records in Context in the Continuum: The Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema’, Archivaria, no. 48, Fall 1999, pp. 3–43.
5. Chris Hurley, ‘The Hunting of the Snark: Looking for Digital “Series”’, 2011, available at <http://www.descriptionguy.com/images/WEBSITE/hunting-of-the-snark-search-for-digital-series.pdf>, accessed 25 January 2014.
6. Sue McKemmish, Adrian Cunningham and Dagmar Parer, ‘Metadata Mania: Use of Metadata for Electronic Recordkeeping and Online Resource Discovery’, in Place, Interface and Cyberspace: Archives at the Edge, Proceedings of the 1998 Conference of the Australian Society of Archivists, Fremantle 6-8 August 1998, Australian Society of Archivists, Canberra, 1998, available at <http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/groups/rcrg/publications/recordkeepingmetadata-sm01.html>, accessed 2 September 2012.
7. Chris Hurley, ‘The Making and Keeping of Records: (1) What Are Finding Aids For?’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 26, no. 1, May 1998, pp. 58–77.
8. McKemmish et al., ‘Describing Records in Context in the Continuum’, p. 8.
9. Wendy Duff and Verne Harris, ‘Stories and Names: Archival Description as Narrating Records and Constructing Meanings’, Archival Science, vol. 2, nos 3–4, 2002, pp. 263–85, doi:10.1007/BF02435625.
10. Sue McKemmish, ‘Are Records Ever Actual?’, in The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and Australian Archives First Fifty Years, Sue McKemmish and Michael Piggott (eds), Ancora Press, Clayton, 1994, pp. 187–203.
11. Gilliland and McKemmish.
12. Duff and Harris; Gilliland and McKemmish.
13. Heather MacNeil, ‘Picking Our Text: Archival Description, Authenticity, and the Archivist as Editor’, American Archivist, vol. 68, no. 2, 1 September 2005, p. 272.
14. ibid., p. 276.
15. Christian Bizer, Tom Heath and Tim Berners-Lee, ‘Linked Data – The Story So Far’, International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, vol. 5, no. 3, 2009, pp. 1–22, doi:10.4018/jswis.2009081901.
16. Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing, Springer London, London, 2006, available at <http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/1-84628-301-9_1>, accessed 21 January 2013.
17. Joanne Evans and Nadav Rouche, ‘Utilizing Systems Development Methods in Archival Systems Research: Building a Metadata Schema Registry’, Archival Science, vol. 4, nos 3–4, December 2004, pp. 315–334, doi:10.1007/s10502-005-2598-4.
18. Toby Burrows, ‘Identity Parade: Managing Contextual Personal Information for Archival Data’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 36, no. 2, November 2008, pp. 88–104.
19. Kathy Charmaz, ‘Premises, Principles, and Practices in Qualitative Research: Revisiting the Foundations’, Qualitative Health Research, vol. 14, no. 7, 2004, pp. 976–93, doi:10.1177/1049732304266795.
20. Sarah Wall, ‘An Autoethnography on Learning About Autoethnography’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, vol. 5, no. 2, 2006, pp. 146–60.
21. Andrew C Sparkes, ‘Autoethnography and Narratives of Self: Reflections on Criteria in Action’, Sociology of Sport Journal, vol. 17, no. 1, 2000, pp. 21–43.
22. Carolyn Ellis, Tony E Adams and Arthur P Bochner, ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol. 12, no. 1, 24 November 2010, available at <http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589>, accessed 23 January 2014.
23. Ciaran Trace and Andrew Dillon, ‘The Evolution of the Finding Aid in the United States: From Physical to Digital Document Genre’, Archival Science, vol. 12, no. 4, December 2012, pp. 1–19, doi:10.1007/s10502-012-9190-5; MacNeil, ‘Picking Our Text’; Heather MacNeil, ‘What Finding Aids Do: Archival Description as Rhetorical Genre in Traditional and Web-Based Environments’, Archival Science, vol. 12, no. 4, December 2012, pp. 485–500, doi:10.1007/s10502-012-9175-4.
24. Clark A Elliott, Understanding Progress as Process: Documentation of the History of Post-War Science and Technology in the United States, Society of American Archivists, Chicago, 1983.
25. Processing in situ was often preferred, given the potential access it afforded to contextual knowledge ‘in living finding aids, the minds of record creators and users’, Hurley, ‘The Making and Keeping of Records’, p. 60.
26. Frank Upward, ‘Structuring the Records Continuum: Part One: Postcustodial Principles and Properties’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 24, no. 2, November 1996, pp. 268–85.
27. Sue McKemmish, ‘Placing Records Continuum Theory and Practice’, Archival Science, vol. 1, no. 4, December 2001, pp. 333–59, doi:10.1007/BF02438901.
28. Australian Science Archives Project, ‘ASAP Annual Report 1996’, 23 January 1998, available at <http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/pubs/reports/1996/ar96_3.htm>, accessed 9 September 2012.
29. ibid.
30. Peter Scott, ‘The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment’, American Archivist, vol. 29, no. 4, October 1966, pp. 493–504.
31. Chris Hurley, ‘Description’, Chris Hurley’s Stuff, 2012, available at <http://www.descriptionguy.com/description.html>, accessed 28 November 2013.
32. Barbara Reed, ‘The Australian Context Relationship (CRS or Series) System: An Appreciation’, in The Arrangement and Description of Archives Amid Administrative and Technological Change: Essays and Reflections By and About Peter J. Scott, Adrian Cunningham (ed.), Australian Society of Archivists, 2010, pp. 346–73.
33. Joanne Evans, ‘Structure of the ADS’, in Archives and Reform – Preparing for Tomorrow, Proceedings of the Australian Society of Archivists Conference, Adelaide, 25–26th July 1997, 1997, available at <http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/pubs/articles/asa97/ADSStructure.htm>, accessed 9 September 2012.
34. ibid. ‘The idea is that all records identified in the accessioning process are documented at the series and inventory level. We aim to document the total records environment. Not only do the inventory, series and provenance tables contain archival documentation of records of continuing or long term value, but they also document other records created and used by an organisation or individual related to the surviving records, building a picture of the total recordkeeping environment. Varying the inventory unit ensures that high value records can be documented to a more detailed level then those of lesser value or those scheduled for destruction. In this way the ADS facilitates the systematic documentation of all records and what is done with them.’
35. MacNeil, ‘Picking Our Text’.
36. Evans, ‘Structure of the ADS’.
37. ibid.
38. Shannon Faulkhead, Joanne Evans and Helen Morgan, ‘Is Technology Enough? Developing Archival Information Systems in Community Environments’, ESARBICA Journal, vol. 24, 2005, pp. 74–95, doi:10.4314/esarjo.v24i1.30997.
39. Daniel V Pitti, ‘Encoded Archival Description’, D-Lib Magazine, vol. 5, no. 11, November 1999, doi:10.1045/november99-pitti.
40. Joanne Evans, REEA – Building an Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Generator for the HDMS, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, July 2000, available at <http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/HDMS/HDMSeadreport.pdf>, accessed 28 November 2013.
41. An example of this is the use of the indexing functionality by the South Australia Museum Archives, see <http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/collections/information-resources/archives-search>, accessed 28 November 2013.
42. Gavan McCarthy, Guide to the Archives of Science in Australia: Records of Individuals, D W Thorpe, 1991.
43. Gavan McCarthy and Joanne Evans, ‘Mapping the Socio-Technical Complexity of Australian Science: From Archival Authorities to Networks of Contextual Information’, Journal of Archival Organization, vol. 5, nos 1–2, 2008, pp. 149–75, doi:10.1300/J201v05n01_08.
44. McCarthy.
45. Tim Sherratt, ‘Pathways to Memory’, in Proceedings of AusWeb96 – The Second Australian World Wide Web Conference, Southern Cross University, 1996, available at <http://discontents.com.au/words/articles/pathways-to-memory>, accessed 14 September 2012.
46. Gavan J McCarthy and Joanne Evans, ‘Principles for Archival Information Services in the Public Domain’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 40, no. 1, March 2012, pp. 54–67, doi:10.1080/01576895.2012.670872.
47. ibid., p. 57.
48. For example ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), CIDOC CRM, Dublin Core, FRBR, EAD and EAC-CPF.
49. One of those bones that I know is buried in the OHRM artefact.
50. Tim O’Reilly, ‘What is Web 2.0?’, O’Relly Media, 30 September 2005, available at <http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html>, accessed 15 September 2012.
51. Nikki Henningham, Joanne Evans and Helen Morgan, ‘Out of the Shadows: Using Technology to Illuminate Women’s Archives’, in Women’s Memory: The Problem of Sources, 20th Anniversary Symposium of the Women’s Library and Information Centre Foundation 17–19 April 2009, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey, Women’s Library and Information Centre Foundation, Instanbul, 2009, pp. 389–99.
52. Donald A Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York, 1984.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Joanne Evans
Dr Joanne Evans is a lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, and coordinator of the Records Continuum Research Group, part of the Faculty’s Centre of Organisational and Social Informatics. She has many years of experience in archival systems development, with the technologies she has been involved in designing and developing deployed into a number of research projects, as well as being utilised in small archives settings. Joanne undertook her PhD at Monash as part of the Australian Research Council Linkage-funded Clever Recordkeeping Metadata Project (2003–06) and received a Vice Chancellor’s Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence for her thesis, Building Capacities for Sustainable Recordkeeping Metadata Interoperability. Her research interests lie in the multifarious roles metadata plays in creating, managing and sustaining information and recordkeeping infrastructure and systems, with an increasing emphasis on the nature of archival design.