Technology
Beyond paper: the digital trail
In June, we hosted a discussion between Professor Lisa Jardine CBE and Professor the Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield in which the distinguished historians explored the value of our archival heritage and considered why ‘sustaining the collective memory of the nation is a first-order requirement’.
- During this discussion lots of digital topics were touched on, so we re-visited and expanded on these in a live Twitter debate featuring contributions from our Head of Digital Preservation Tim Gollins and Research and Policy Manager Valerie Johnson.
- We have five topics to discuss in #digitaltrail - quantity, serendipity, marginalia, forgery & finding things ht.ly/dleiT
Our first topic was quantity. Would there simply be too much information in the future?
Researchers of the 16th century have commented that there are relatively few records of the period, whether due to archivist’s selections, lack of collection care until recent times or the degradations of time. But these researchers also attest to relishing the challenge of the hunt for information, of successfully following a difficult trail.In principle we could keep a very large amount of digital data – but is this likely? What about cost and storage implications?
Also, do we need to worry that there will be vast amounts of data? There is a vast amount of information available on the internet, yet this doesn’t present a challenge as we use tools to find what we need. Why would or should a digital archive be any different?
Is it that historians and researchers fear they will miss out on what they enjoy most – the thrill of finding leads, the thrill of holding the physical record?
- It seeemed that too much information may be the case ...
@UkNatArchives #digitaltrail.Harvard just reported that they have cracked data storage on DNA, so there will be an explosion of stored info.- And, that digital archives had, in fact, made archivists of us all.
In a sense, users of digital archives become archivists, as they can record, catalogue and share material #digitaltrail
@ProfShakespeare as information becomes addressable/ linkable where is the boundary between the archive catalog and the user #digitaltrail- @timgollins @ProfShakespeare #digitaltrail. And in the born digital world, where is the boundary between the catalogue and the record?
- It seemed that for many, it didn't matter how much information there was, so long as we could search and find what we are looking for.
RT @VJJohnson1: The issue for me is not storage, but search. How do we find the needles in the haystack? #digitaltrail- @UkNatArchives I don't think so but we need to develop tools to search and process digital information in useful ways #digitaltrail
research is a journey, often chance meetings with fellow travellers become key, how can we digitally facilitate such meetings? #digitaltrail- @SianVaughan Definitely a prob for web archives. Difficult to know who is making use of our records #digitaltrail (this time with hashtag!)
- #digitaltrail We mustn't forget the great things about digital - large scale rapid interrogation of info - archives as data!
- It also seemed that this was potentially not a new consideration.
#digitaltrail I wonder did archivist have the same question when paper became cheap and ubiquitous?- @johnmayo #digitaltrail think its is more like manuscript to printing - "well Mr Gutenberg you have printed the bible, no more left to do"
@UkNatArchives fears of information overload date back to Gutenberg, but tools are constantly being developed to sort/filter #digitaltrail- @lddurbin @UkNatArchives #digitaltrail I agree - new technologies - print, telephone etc always seem to attract fears of info disaster!
@UkNatArchives This is not a new problem - didn't archives come into being to deal with "too much information"? #digitaltrail- @samklai @UkNatArchives #digitaltrail Think original purpose of archives was to provide authentic record of administration.
- @samklai #digitaltrail I agree there has always been "too much information" humans are good and finding solutions to that - its what we are
