1.
Online Content Curation
Daniel Wilksch
Public Record Office Victoria

2.
• what have we got?
• how are we making use of it?
– developing themes and designing projects
• engaging our community
• sustainability

3.
Public Record Office Victoria
• We are the archives for the
state of Victoria, established
under the Public Records Act
1973.
• We are responsible for
managing and providing
access to public records.

4.
Public records:
• are records created or received by government
officials as they do their jobs.
• may be products of administrative processes (eg.
wills) or they may document functions of
government (eg. annual reports).
• are unique and have evidential value.

5.
we have documented
• around 4,500 government agencies
• over 17,000 recordkeeping series
• over 90 (shelf) km of paper, photographs, etc.
• over a million electronic records
and this is just material we have decided to keep

6.
Jedi archives
(Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, 2002)

7.
secret vatican archives
Angels and Demons, 2006

8.
archives of Gondor
(The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001)

9.
archives of Gondor
(The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001)
where’s his gloves?
don’t crumple the
2,000 year old
manuscript!
is this to put out
the fire, then?
has he been DRINKING !?
(no way this is 2,000 years old,
btw, faaake)

10.
MI6 archives (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 2012)

11.
sources
Edward Kelly to Sergeant Babington
1870
VPS 937/P0, unit 272

12.
evidence
Meeting notice used in Eureka
Stockade treason trials
VPRS 5527/P0, unit 4

13.
facts
Police Muster Rolls, 1878
VPRS 55/P0, unit 8
School Inspector’s Notebooks,
Avenel PS, 30 March 1864
VPRS 9864/P0, unit 1

14.
stories
Page from inquest into Edward Kelly’s
death, 1880
VPRS 24/P0, unit 411

15.
however…

16.
defining terms
Digital curation
• is the selection, preservation, maintenance,
collection and archiving of digital assets.
– Wikipedia, ‘Digital curation’

17.
to curate
• select, organize, and present (suitable content, typically for online or
computational use), using professional or expert knowledge
– online Oxford dictionary
content curation
• is the ongoing finding and sharing of relevant digital and
non-digital content about a specific topic for a specific
audience.
– National Library of New Zealand

18.
the map is not the territory
– Alfred Korzybski
• curating and cataloguing
• individual records and ‘datasets’
• information and stories

19.
this is real
• the conversations aren’t ephemeral
• privacy and sensitivity considerations when
working over the internet
• workable copyright and licensing arrangements

20.
exposing the highlights
• Just a few records or a well-known story
• marketing, even branding the organisation
• addresses the frequently asked questions

21.
http://prov.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/disaster-at-west-gat

22.
degustation
• introduces record types
• mixture of ‘useful’ background history for research
and some highlight records
• records as though they were art

23.
follow the trail
• linking names, dates, places across records.
• showcases family history research (but most
research is about following people).
• relates our systems to common research
questions

24.
thrill of the chase
• meant as a more complete resource around a
topic. a mini-archive
• interactivity and excitement
• but also a destination

25.
records and narrative
• viewers may need tools and context
(handwriting recognition, 19th
-century
bureaucracy)
• as little extra text as possible
• can one source illuminate another?
• treat your narrative as another record

26.
finding themes
• strange and familiar
does this exhibition help the audience make sense
of their own world or someone else’s?
• ‘I’ll show you mine…’
connect through shared interests and concerns

27.
working with your community
• what are you trying to produce?
• where do you fit in the process?

28.
working with your peers
• content as ‘currency’
but also
• stories are shared

29.
education
• teachers need packages to slot into curricula

30.
sustainability
• marry curation to catalogue, but
• separate discussion from resource
• persistent URLs, but
• expect to migrate (
http://web.archive.org/web/20110312040955/http://w
)