DCDC14

1. If together we build it
they will come
Toward collaborative development of born-digital
archives to facilitate discovery
Judy Burg, University Archivist
Chris Awre, Head of Information Management
Library and Learning Innovation
DCDC conference, 29-30th October 2014

2. The Field of Dreams (as seen from Hull)
• (Re-)creating archive tools and systems for the digital world
• Born-digital records not as a subset of archives – but as the
current and future reality of archives
• Needs work beyond any single archive office
• Model of AIMS project – outputs and experience
• Creating a shared direction of travel
• Exploring how to get there
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3. Academic library trends and
collaborations

4. Print to digital
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Print Digital
Books E-Books
Journals E-Journals
Reference works Online reference works /
The Internet
Videos/DVDs YouTube, NetFlix, etc.
CDs iTunes, Spotify, etc.
Slides Flickr, Google Images, etc.
Theses E-Theses, EThOS

5. Personal libraries
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Books/e-books
Web resources
Music/film
Journals/e-journals
Grey literature

6. Owning to renting
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Elsevier
Wiley
Sage
Jisc Collections
Netflix

7. Shift to the network level
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Resources
ERM
Discovery
Subject guides
Reading lists
Library management systems

8. How do born-digital archives relate to these
trends?
• A born-digital archive is focused on managing digital
material (of course)
• Born-digital archive content can be part of a personal library
– And a valuable part of this
• Focus on ownership, not rental
– Each archive’s content is unique
• Move to the network level?
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9. Network benefits
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Practical benefit
- Delivering more
value locally
Economic benefit
- Scaling up delivery
Technical benefit
- Concentrated development
Born-digital archive

10. Jisc Spotlight on the Digital
• Focus on digitised collections and their
management/accessibility over time
• Highlighted need for
– Institutional capacity building
– Benefit of working with network level services, e.g.,
aggregators
– Network level foresight and oversight of collection
management and delivery
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11. Collaboration in action (examples)
• CURL
– Produced COPAC union catalogue
• Data centres
– MIMAS/EDINA
• NB. Archives Hub at MIMAS
• SHEDL – Scottish HE Digital Libraries
– Service provider to Scottish Universities
• Northern Collaboration
– Recognised need to work together to develop services
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12. Collaboration in action (archives)
• Archives & Records Council Wales Digital Preservation
Consortium
– Joint initiative to explore use of Archivematica to serve
Welsh archives
• ArchivesSpace development
– US institutional consortium developing archives
management system
• Edinburgh now implementing this as part of partnership
• Janus website of Cambridge College archives
– Also Archives Hub and Hull History Centre catalogue
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13. AIMS – An Inter-institutional Model for
Stewardship of born-digital archives
• Mellon-funded project 2009-11
– Hull, Stanford, Virginia, Yale
• Technology agnostic
• Focused on model of practice and operation
• Identified many common threads in archive activity
• Challenge of implementation
– How to put the model into practice
– Needs further collaboration
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14. Collaboration – to be
or not to be?

15. Collaboration – to be
or not to be?
• Waiting for someone else to open Pandora’s box and find an
answer
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16. Barriers to collaboration: inertia
• Waiting for the perfect tool
• Numerous projects and initiatives which “might lead to
something”
• Implicit shared perception that development could/should
have wide application across the archive sector
• Waiting for perfect funding call
• Not yet an explicit shared understanding of what is needed
• Little incentive to initiate or lead major new project
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17. Barriers to collaboration: cost and capacity
• Limited capacity within individual archive office
• Uncertainty over scope of project – given uncertainty over shared
aims and requirements
• Need for scoping project prior to development
• Potential cost of development
• Uncertainty over cost of development
• Limited prospect of commercial gain
• Waiting for perfect funding call (but without an ‘on the shelf’
proposal)
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18. Barriers to collaboration: size of the challenge
• Lack of explicit shared understanding of next steps
• Limited explicit shared understanding of direction of travel
• Few shared axiomatic principles
• Perception that there are no ‘small steps’ or quick wins
• Additional challenge of dealing with access restrictions and
rights management issues
• Requirements for archive arrangement and description are
complicated!
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19. Collaboration – to be?
Archive collaboration works well for
• ‘types’ of archive (eg literary,
political, business)
• Use-cases (eg education,
digitization)
• definable consortia (eg AIM25,
A&RC Wales)
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20. Collaboration – to be?
Archive collaboration works well for
• Definable projects and outputs (eg
digitisation, disaster reaction)
• Lead organisation and other
contributors share technical and
strategic objectives (TNA and A2A,
OCLC and RLUK research projects)
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21. Define and foster collaboration
• What is needed to get it off the ground?
• How can common areas be identified?
• How can variance be accounted for – within collaborative
structure and defined outcomes?
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22. Finding next steps
• Contact us to be involved in further discussions
• Propose to set up a Google Group
• C.awre@hull.ac.uk
• J.burg@hull.ac.uk
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23. Thank you