This was the launch event for DALE with about twenty people in the room and more joining in via Twitter on #DALE_ideas. The introduction from Hannah Jones from TNA made it clear that the group was planned to be facilitated not ran by TNA to provide an opportunity for practitioners to share experiences, knowledge and outcomes via 3 meetings a year around the UK and an online forum.
Jo Pugh from TNA went on to talk about how they plan to help build digital capacity within archives (following their survey which revealed a huge lack of confidence around digital within archive staff). This work runs across the three elements of Preservation, Access and Engagement and whilst the programme is still being developed, it certainly looked very helpful in all three areas. Things like a platform to enable crowdsourced description, engagement toolkit, entry level guidance for preservation, peer mentoring and microgrants for digital events.
He ended by talking about the importance of embedding change and recognising that archiving is now a fully hybrid activity: “the current situation harms the profession and risks the integrity of the record.”
The next session was from Chris Grygiel from Leeds University – “Digital Preservation on Campus”. This was quite technical in terms of software such as BitCurator and Archivematica but it was interesting to see the workflow, even if I didn’t feel competent to download it and have a go… At the moment, I don’t tend to receive digital donations but I can see that the time will come quite soon when the box of papers will also contain a USB or two and even an entire PC! So perhaps I should be learning about it now before that day arrives.
I was much more back in my comfort zone with User Centred design with Jo again. We’re looking at personas now so this was exactly in tune with the work we’re doing which was satisfying. I also agreed with his suggestion to watch users using your own catalogue – it can be extremely painful but also very informative!
Then on to ArchivesHub with Jane Stevenson and “Who need be afraid of the merge?” We have just one set of records on Archives Hub currently as a test; the process made us very aware of the failings in our data… I have been meaning to get back to it for a while and Jane did inspire me to have another try once our new system is in place. I need to wait for that because, very sensibly to avoid version control problems, any edits they need to make your data work in ArchivesHub have to happen within your own software (unless you are using their free editor option).
I liked her ideas of thinking about catalogue descriptions as data in the widest sense – and the potential for wider funding possibilities that brings! Their goal is very much reusable data and having a more global perspective. The information about Records in Context (RiC) was new to me, and whilst I have some awareness of Linked Data, I was pleased to have a more accessible introduction. I was also relieved to hear that even they found it difficult…
Techniques around uniquely identifying people using VIAF look up to give them unique reference numbers was also extremely interesting and timely; I will definitely try and tie this into our new system beyond the LC Name Authority files we currently use in Koha.
The day certainly left me thinking that I need to further consider digital preservation. I feel we’re working well on engagement (and we certainly have suitable goals and plans) and we are quite strong on access, particularly once we have our new Digital Asset Management system (Nymbol from Ammba) but we really haven’t thought about born digital internal records and preserving those.
mininglibrarian 