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Similaire à People unlock collections - user participation at The National Archives | DCDC14
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People unlock collections - user participation at The National Archives | DCDC14
- 2. Juergen Vervoorst, The National Archives 29 October 2014 Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities TNA/ RLUK Conference Birmingham 2014 People unlock Collections – User Participation at The National Archives
- 3. Volunteering ↔ User Participation
- 4. CO 1069/301/17 1. Caribbean Through A Lens: a new approach with digitised collections The National Archives, CO 1069/301/9
- 5. Consulting, fostering and community commitment Chase Neighbourhood Centre, Nottingham Cuming Museum Exhibition Southwark, London
- 6. ‘Caribbean Through a Lens’ on Flickr: Upturned Train Case: The laughter of women INF 10/ 379 re-used by P. Richardsca Caribbean Through A Lens - The National Archives Caribbean Through A Lens – Huddersfield/ Kirklees
- 7. 2. Operation War Diary: Recruiting an army of Citizen Historians Operation War Diary WWI 100 at The National Archives
- 8. Operation War Diary: the task
- 9. Operation War Diary: the launch In its first week after launch, the Operation War Diary website saw: • 104,167 pages classified • 116,638 people tagged, including large numbers of non-officer ranks • 212,832 dates tagged • 144,021 activities tagged • 24, 644 weather conditions tagged • 148,402 people visitors to the site • 746,972 diary pages viewed • 85 diaries completed • Equivalent to approximately one person’s year of effort
- 10. 3. Identifying Heroes: the BT 99 (1915) Project The National Archives, NSC 5/7
- 12. The National Archives, COPY 1/515/232 1915 Merchant Navy Crew Lists Project BT99/3100, List 11
- 15. Thank you to my colleagues: Sara Griffiths and Sandra Shakespeare Sarah Leggett and William Spencer Janet Dempsey
Notes de l'éditeur
- Over twenty years experience of collaboration with volunteers at The National Archives Mostly traditional cataloguing work and basic conservation treatment Projects often driven by individual staff or even volunteers rather than by the organisation The National Archives wasn’t always clear about the benefits of volunteering for either the institution or our volunteers Inconsistent volunteer management across the organisation has brought its own issues A review of our volunteering activities in 2011/12 has highlighted the need for improvements to our volunteer programme and has lead to a new form of User Participation at The National Archives : We have professionalised the way we are working with our volunteers and have aligned us with best pratice in the industry in all aspects of volunteer and project management of our User Participation projects We have combined traditional, onsite volunteering activities with virtual collaboration and We have expanded our User Participation activities, not only within our own organisation, but also with external partners, new communities and a volunteer base now across the globe Just over two years into the new programme we now have: A much better understanding of the business requirements for our volunteering projects Built new communities within our existing stakeholder groups, while also reaching out to collaborate with a variety of new audiences and Are using collaborative digital channels, thereby increasing the opportunities for users to interact with us. With the example of three case studies (out of 50 User Participation projects we have started since 2012) I will explain what this looks like for us in real live and how indeed this new approach has helped us to let people, in the broadest possible sense, unlock our collection and that of our partner organisations.
- Following a successful marketing campaign by The National Archives to raise the awareness of our huge collection of photographs of African colonies in our Colonial Office record series CO 1069, and the substantial interest this has created in and value this has added to African communities, in 2011 we used the opportunity to apply Outreach principles to online collection of images which we’ve titled ‘Caribbean Through a Lens” We wanted to promote Caribbean images in a different way: from the ground up, not through traditional press/marketing channels, whilst seeking a balance to the colonial perspective Our Outreach team already had past experience of working with Caribbean audiences and understood some of the barriers and the opportunities
- We wanted to engage Caribbean and wider audiences with the images and to encourage their re-use in community settings, by planning and organising community-led projects nationwide and by evaluating the project formally. It was important for us to: Consult with partners to build trust from the outset and to ensure a balanced perspective to colonial records Foster participation, as we didn't attempt to tell people their history; we weren't the specialists, we wanted to hear their stories Achieve a commitment of community-based members, so they would attend and organise events, use their own contacts, and share their knowledge and experience
- As a result, we have: Worked with over 50 community partners across the country Created 35 regional co-productions and 6 exhibitions Had over 75,000 exhibition visitors – and growing Had c. 110 workshops/ events Over 3,500 participants in these activities Over 100,000 Flickr views With this project we have developed new and diverse audiences – much broader than Caribbean, that we would not have reached with a different approach. We have involved colleagues from across the organisation and the sector in a much improved and far more collaborative approach, which we believe could lead to a new and innovative ways of working with archives and archival collections. And we have learned, even more, about the value and difference that collections can make to the lives of people. Photography has more immediacy with people: the Caribbean collections – with visually arresting photographic images – has been more accessible than written text Inter-generational approaches Contributes to Local Authorities’ ‘Emotional health – well-being agendas’ and supports the idea of strengthening communities
- My second example, Operation War Diary, is part of The National Archives’ First World War 100 programme, which aims to engage new audiences with our collections as well as offering historians and regular archive users fresh insights into this landmark conflict. Operation War Diary itself focuses on the Unit War Diaries in our extensively consulted record class WO 95 and the project is a cooperation between The National Archives, Zooniverse and the Imperial War Museum and is fundamentally a crowd sourcing project. Zooniverse, as you might know, provides a highly flexible framework to support and host citizen science projects, which works with armies of volunteers world wide. It started off with the Galaxy Zoo project initiated at Oxford University, and following its huge success, is now branching out into other areas, for example Nature and Climate project. Operation War diaries is one of only two Humanities projects at the moment.
- The unit war diaries (record series WO 95) represent one of the most popular collections held by The National Archives. War diaries were kept for two main reasons: to provide an accurate record of operations for preparing the official history of the war to collect information that would help make improvements in preparing the army for war Around 1.5 million pages of unit war diaries cover activity on the Western Front. With the help of onsite volunteers we have brought these records into order, following which we have digitised that part of the collectioni. There are lots of different types of pages full of fascinating details about the people involved and descriptions of their activities. Using Zooniverse methodology, volunteers around the globe help to classify the type of page and then tag key data such as names, dates and times, places and maps, unit activities, army life, weather etc. From the tags we can create a detailed index to the people who appear in these pages and learn more about what they were doing, without transcribing every word.
- You can see here some of the very impressive figures that this project achieved just in the first week. Although participation couldn’t be maintained at that extraordinary level, which was to be expected, we have plateaued at around 4500 - 5000 classifications per week, which is still a phenomenal engagement, and something that could hardly be replicated in any other form of project approach. This project did come with its own difficulties – partly due to scale, but also entering into a Zooniverse cooperation was completely new terrotory for us, but has demonstrated an extraordinary interest in and engagement with archival collections, an interest, that can be positively exploited to the benefit of all. In addition, and maybe in particular, this project has highlighted how much more can be achieved when resources, knowledge and experience are shared between several partners, here between archives, museums and academics. We are now entering the second phase of this project, so watch the space. If you want to participate, you will find the link to the website in this presentation.
- My third and final example of how we are working with volunteers in new and different ways highlights how people across the globe can participate in enhancing the knowledge of our collection, but unlike Operation War Diaries still with a strong connection and a somewhat personal relationship to their supervisors. This is about a project called ‘Identifying Heroes’, because every time a record is transcribed, someone who took part in one of the most dangerous civil professions one could be part of in wartime, has been identified: a merchant seaman. These were civilians thrust into the heart of the war at sea during WW1, but they are currently anonymous. There are no dedicated records for merchant seamen, who were mariners during the first world war. Additionally, there are not even published lists, such as the army or navy lists for those who served. There are just crew lists for each and every individual voyage, which at The National Archives are held primarily in the Board of Trade series BT 99. In 1966 a decision was taken to destroy about 90% of these records. Following a campaign to save the records these 90% were split between about 50+ institutions with the Maritime History Archives in Newfoundland/ Canada taking the bulk. The then Public Record Office took every tenth box and so have about 10% of the records. Importantly for this project the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich took all the boxes for years ending in 5 that the Public Record Office did not take. Therefore all of the records for 1915 are held in just two institutions, both of which are in the UK, and this allows for a unique opportunity to dramatically enhance the accessibilty of this collection.
- The idea for the 1915 project was simple: to transcribe the crew lists held at The National Archives and at the National Maritime Museum to create a combined record of merchant seamen who were at sea during WW1. But, just to give you some idea of the scale: there are 774 boxes of lists split between the two sites Contained in those boxes arebetween 35 and 40 thousand separate crew lists. Within those lists somewhere between 1 and 1 1/2 million men and women are listed unless one has got the name of a ship, there is no way of finding the individual and there was very limited budget for this project. We’ve cooperated with the National Maritime Museum to agree on a single system of cataloguing, encouraging them to photograph their lists and to involve volunteers. We consulted the people behind the Crew list index project (CLIP), which is a web based project run by private enthusiasts, as they had the experience of getting similar records transcribed and online from county record offices and they agreed to let us use their transcription software, which considerably cut down on development costs. We resolved some funding issues to commission imaging of all pages within the crew lists that contained names, and worked with in-house IT to set up a dedicated website to allow volunteers to work from home, which negates the need for security clearance and allows for volunteers from all over the world to get involved. Talks and events promoted the project and helped us with finding volunteers. We then managed to create a brand new and unique record series BT400, which allows us to incorporate the information from National Maritime Museum onto our catalogue.
- We now have over 400 dedicated volunteers working from across the globe, and most likely from their homes, on this project. They all are or have been in direct contact with our project manager and volunteer supervisor, so despite the remote character of this volunteering activity, this project still allows for some supervision and the possibilty to resolve problems.
- This is an illustration of just one crew list from one box. The ship is the Alice Taylor and her 38 crew are now searchable by name, they are anonymous no more and they are identified heroes. All the records in BT99 and BT 400 have been transcribed by our 400+ volunteers. And we now have a dedicated band of volunteers who are helping us with transcription checking We would never be able to manage or to find this many volunteers and working on so many documents onsite, so remote volunteering has been incredibly valuable for us.
- I hope these three examples of our User Participation programme have provided you with a glimpse of what we have felt is possible through the participation of and engagement with our users and new audiences. Many of them, for example working on our Operation War Diary project and especially involved in Caribbean Through a Lens, have never visited our archives or website before, and, quite likely, have never worked with archival collections before, but are adding so much value to our collection. All of these programmes come with their own challenges. As always, whilst voluntary resources are free, they still require a lot of resources such as supervising, project planning, cooperating with partners, etc. The reward for us, however, has been and is immense, and the scale of the projects can be extraordinary and far beyond what otherwise would be achievable. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention and the following colleagues at The National Archives for leading on such outstanding projects and sharing their information for this presentation.