One of the things I love about this job is the brief is so broad. Is there any part of the media, culture or arts world that isn’t digital - or at least heading that way? Consequently, I often find myself getting deeply involved in - and passionate about - stuff that previously may have only been on my periphery.
One such example is archive - and the process of archiving. Bear with me here ... because this post is for those whose automatic response is that this sounds very dry, academic and not really relevant to you. The thing about archive is the deeper you dig, the more real gold you uncover. But there are fundamental problems around it - from the practicalities of recording, digitising and storing archives to the questions around what to do with it once that’s done. How do you make it accessible? Engaging? How do you make it sustainable - or even commercial? How do we keep on top of unearthing and opening out archives of the past whilst ensuring current media and works are created and stored in a way that provides a usable and useful archive for the future? All of this was most brilliantly outlined in a speech by Tony Ageh - the BBC’s Head of Archive Development - at the Reboot Britain event.
The privilege of my position and having such a broad brief is the ability to see parallels with other sectors and other issues. Substitute the word ‘archives’ for ‘data’, for example, and many of those same questions resurface. And this is where I start to get really intrigued, because perhaps many of the same solutions can also be applied.
Take the process of digitising archive, for example. Long. Laborious. Time-consuming. Unsustainable. In his speech, Tony Ageh estimated that it would take the BBC a hundred and twenty years to digitise their entire archive - and they’ve only been around since 1922. So where do you start with the British Library, or any one of thousands of other important archives across the UK? If the starting point is that this is impossible to achieve in our lifetime using current resources, structures, funding and methodologies, then clearly it’s time for a rethink.
The question is : can digital and social media tools, platforms, practices and networks be used to distribute the workload and make the impossible possible? What happens when you open out access to archives and elements of the archiving process to a worldwide community? In much the same way as we have seen amazing results and some truly extraordinary work being created through opening out and making available public data, can we see the same with archive?
I think we can. My favourite example of this at the moment is reCAPTCHA - recently bought by Google. The sheer, simple genius of this service leaves me almost speechless. On the one hand, it provides a valuable service to website owners and users. A small, simple thing that protects sites from spammers and bots. But, under the surface, millions of users on a daily basis are helping to digitise old texts, including the entire written archive of the New York Times. And the beauty of it is that they don’t even know they’re doing it. But this is just one small part of the process - one problem solved of many. Are there others we can solve in a similar way?
I’m delighted that this will be one of many issues we’ll be discussing at our forthcoming Archive Conference on Thursday 26th November at The Public. We’ve been planning this for a while with our partners at Arts Council WM and MLA, so it’s nice to finally be able to announce it. We’re all hugely excited about the programme. Given the fact that the whole focus of the event will be on the digital opportunity for archives, it would be great to see a good representation of those interested from the digital and social media side at the event as well as those directly involved with archives and collections. More details and full programme will be announced shortly - watch this space - but in the meantime I’d welcome your comments here or drop me a line if you have any immediate questions.