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DRAFT ONLYEMERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE PROVISION OFACCESS TO ARCHIVES
ISSUES, CHALLENGES AND IDEAS
Dr Tim SherrattOctober 2009
CONTENTS
Introduction 1Discovery 4Visualising collectionsOpening up dataEnhancing dataUsing and re-using dataDelivery 13Living on cloudsThe question of voiceExtending, experimenting and integratingCollaboration 19Knowing users, building communitiesHarnessing knowledgeDIY archivesControl 26Establishing authorityMaintaining contextUse and reuseConclusion 31Appendix 32NOTE: All links cited in this paper were correct as of 5 October 2009.
 
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE PROVISION OF ACCESS TO ARCHIVES
‘it is clear that we are in a period of uncertainty, where learning and experimentation will require risk-taking and leaps of faith’
Joy Palmer
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INTRODUCTION
Online technology is changing quickly. Any attempt to capture a snapshot of such a rapidlymoving target is fraught with difficulty and likely to be outdated by the time ink meets paper. Thismorning, for example, my Twitter stream alerted me to three items of relevance to this report: anarticle on the use of Flickr by the Smithsonian, a report on developments in augmented reality,and a discussion paper on Archives 2.0. Each day brings more. It is an exciting time for archives,but it can also seem overwhelming.Beneath the excitement of the new lurk many familiar questions. Issues of authority andauthenticity were being discussed in the archival circles before the possibilities of user-generatedcontent were fully recognised. The limitations of finding aids were well-known beforedevelopments in visualisation and data-sharing started to change the meaning of discovery. Whilethe rapid march of online technology brings many new issues, it also forces us to re-examinemany old and complex problems.Labels can be misleading. ‘Web 2.0’ itself bears a strong whiff of technological determinism,implying a clear-cut periodisation of history. But when the web was first developed in thelaboratories of CERN it was imagined as a platform for community collaboration. What we knowas Web 2.0 was a movement back towards a user-centred model that had been obscured by theinflux of commercial interests in the late 1990s.Similarly, labels would have us think that ‘Web 3.0’ – the semantic web – is bound to supersedeits numerical predecessor. But these are not versions of the web, they are bundles of technologies,standards, approaches, assumptions and ideals. Some of the most interesting possibilities forarchives will come from the combination of Web 2.0 with the semantic web.Web 2.0 and 3.0 will not change archives. But they do provide tools with which archives canchange themselves. Doing so will require many old and difficult questions to be re-examined. Itwill demand a thoroughgoing reassessment of the relationship between archives and their users.It’s not just about technology. As Kate Theimer pointed out in a recent conference presentation,Archives 2.0 is not equal to Archives plus Web 2.0.
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Joy Palmer, ‘Archives 2.0: If we build it, will they come?’,
 Ariadne
, no. 60, July 2009,<www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue60/palmer>.
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EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE PROVISION OF ACCESS TO ARCHIVES
ARCHIVES 1.0 ARCHIVES 2.0
Closed OpenOpaque TransparentArchivist/record-centred User-centredLocalised practices Use of standardsTechnology-phobic Technology-savvyResults ‘unmeasurable’ Measuring outcomes, outputs, impactsArchivist as provider or gatekeeper,authorityArchivist as facilitatorFocused on ‘perfect’ products Open to iterating productsArchivists valued because of what theyknowArchivists valued because of what they doTradition Innovation & flexibilityRelied on users to find us Looking for ways to attract new users
Source: <www.slideshare.net/ktheimer/archives-20-an-introduction>
This transformation will not be won by waiting. Perhaps the most valuable feature of Web 2.0 isits emphasis on participation and experimentation. You learn by doing. The knotty problems thatseem to block our way might unravel as we become more familiar with the technology, as wework with users to develop new resources, as we try, fail and try again.For these reasons this report does not attempt to provide a detailed summary of onlinetechnologies. Even if it were possible, it would be of little use. Nor does this report provide a Web2.0 primer – such resources are already available online. What this report seeks to provide is a setof potential starting points – questions, technologies and possibilities – that might form the basisfor further discussions and experiments.What is required is an ongoing commitment to explore. We need to share ideas and resources andto seek answers together.
RESOURCESOverviews and surveys
THE INTERACTIVE ARCHIVIST<LIB.BYU.EDU/SITES/INTERACTIVEARCHIVIST>
A useful introduction to Web 2.0 technologies and their potential impact onarchives.
Includes a series of detailed case studies covering topics such as blogs,mashups, photo sharing, tagging and wikis.ARCHIVES 2.0<ARCHIVES2POINT0.WETPAINT.COM>
A wiki listing archives, special collections and historical societies that haveimplemented Web 2.0 technologies.
Categories include: blogs, wikis, podcasts, microblogging, image sharing, videosharing and mashups.
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