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Abstract: This article focuses on use and users of data from the NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), U.S. Who is using archival electronic records, and why are they using them? It describes the changes in use and consequently user groups over the last 30 years. The changes in use are related to the evolution of reference services for electronic records at NARA, as well as to growth in the types of electronic records accessioned by NARA. The first user group consisted mainly of researchers with a social science background, who usually expected to handle the data themselves. The user community expanded when electronic records with personal value, like casualty records, were transferred to NARA, and broadened yet again when a selection of NARA’s electronic records became available online. Archivists trying to develop user services for electronic records will find that the needs and expectations of fact or information seeking data users are different from those of researchers using and analyzing data files.
Annotation: Adams examines the changes in users and uses of NARA electronic records over a period of 30 years. She identifies two main communities of users: those analyzing data to produce new knowledge, and those looking for specific information. Online access to electronic record files through the Access to Archives Databases (AAD) tool increased the number of users in both communities by drawing attention to the resources and by increasing ease of access particularly to personal information. Adams concludes that recognizing the different needs and expectations of user communities will be useful when developing user services models for new types of digital records.
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Annotation: This white paper describes the AIMS project, a collaboration between four institutions—one in the United Kingdom (University of Hull), and three in the United States (Stanford University, University of Virginia, and Yale University)—to establish practices and infrastructure for born-digital stewardship. The AIMS project partners discuss the four functions of stewardship: collection development, accessioning, arrangement and description, and discovery and access. They discuss objectives for selecting and implementing access models based on the requirements of the collection and of the designated user community. They also provide examples of access models and explain various factors to consider when selecting one.
Abstract: In 2004, Canada’s national library and national archives merged to form Library and Archives Canada (LAC). LAC has become more than the sum of its parts, creating synergies between library and archives collections and services, realizing efficiencies and satisfying user demands for seamless access to all holdings. LAC has already created and launched Fed Search, an online search tool that provides clients with single-search access to library, archives, and online collections. LAC is in the process of building a Trusted Digital Repository that will combine ingest, preservation, management and dissemination services for archives and library collections.
Annotation: Bak and Armstrong discuss the different tools and methodologies Library and Archives Canada (LAC) are using to provide access to diverse digital objects through a trusted digital repository. This digital repository is based on the Open Archival Information Systems Reference Model (OAIS), where Canadian documentary digital heritage can be identified, acquired, managed, preserved, discovered, and disseminated. Bak and Armstrong explain the LAC single-search access tool, Fed search, and how it mediates bibliographic and archival descriptive metadata through using MODS. Theyalso discuss in detail how LAC is building a Trusted Digital Repository to become compliant with Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC). Bak and Armstrong describe LAC’s TDR policy for ensuring the integrity, authenticity, and continuing access to digital collections. Another important component to ensure access to digital objects is through implementing persistent identifiers for digital objects, by which LAC has selected Archival Resource Key (ARK). The ARK facilitates high-quality and persistent identification of information objects. The ultimate goal for LAC TDR is to provide a simple, comprehensive, online access and long-term preservation for Canada’s digital documentary heritage.
Abstract: In the last twenty years, many collecting institutions have heeded the calls by indigenous activists to integrate indigenous models and knowledge into mainstream practices. The digital terrain poses both possibilities and problems for indigenous peoples as they seek to manage, revive, circulate, and create new cultural heritage within overlapping colonial/postcolonial histories and oftentimes-binary public debates about access in a digital age. While digital technologies allow for items to be repatriated quickly, circulated widely, and annotated endlessly, these same technologies pose challenges to some indigenous communities who wish to add their expert voices to public collections and also maintain some traditional cultural protocols for the viewing, circulation, and reproduction of some materials. This case study examines one collaborative archival project aimed at digitally repatriating and reciprocally curating cultural heritage materials of the Plateau tribes in the Pacific Northwest.
Annotation: Christen discusses "digital repatriation" of cultural heritage materials to indigenous communities. She challenges archivists to be flexible, imaginative, and culturally sensitive in their application of standards and access policies to digital archives of indigenous materials. When defining access, Christen goes beyond viewing materials, to describing materials in a way that acknowledges traditional indigenous knowledge systems. She uses the Plateau People's Web Portal as a case study and she advocates for "reciprocal curation," which is the set of practices allowing both scholars and indigenous communities to upload and manage digital objects. This provides standard metadata as well as specific traditional knowledge.
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Annotation: A broad discussion of digital forensics and its applications in cultural heritage institutions, particularly digital archives. Of interest here is Section 3.1.1, "Access Controls and Oversight of Use." Kirschenbaum, Ovenden, and Redwine suggest the need to establish a sense of trust with a potential donor through personal relationships as well as through technological provisions for security. They list necessary provisions for controlling access to digital content so that privacy and security will not be compromised. They also suggest the need to consider the monetary value that digital archival material may come to hold as such material becomes better understood. This then makes the need for security even more pressing. This high-level discussion of necessary access controls does not get into the technical details of how to set up or maintain such controls.
Abstract: None
Annotation: In this article, Prelinger discusses how archivists need to advocate for broadly expanded access to moving image collections. This article is organized into three sections. First, the common reasons why archivists limit access to moving image collections beyond mediated access in repository reading rooms. Second, the roadblocks to providing public access to moving images and how commercial distribution of archival footage in public repositories such as YouTube and the Internet Archive provide wider access to archival footage than traditional repositories. Third, Prelinger discusses proactive modes of thinking regarding policies and methods that provide wide access to moving image archives. Prelinger argues that too much focus on the preservation and protection of moving image collections can hinder potential access. Digitization of moving images provides preservation and accessibility. Ultimately, moving image archives must expand access to collections in order to benefit both users and archives. Access goes beyond providing user services. It is a formative practice which exposes archives and archivists to changing cultural and social practices outside the traditional repository.