Archivists Code of Ethics states “archivists protect the privacy rights of donors and individuals or groups who are the subject of records.” We need to think also about the “rights” and caretaking of the collectively created data. There are questions about ownership of the augmented data that need to be addressed. We need to create a place for discussion of practices around data augmentation with socially contributed metadata.
5. Designing for sustainability.
We have heard much in the press recently about establishing provenance, considerations of authenticity and integrity, and content rights. Recent efforts from groups such as the Organization for Transformative Works address the trials of remix and fandom with their statement: “We envision a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity,” wanting to protect fans, the work, the commentary, the history, and thus identity, “providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans.” Access is certainly part of it, but as a secondary point preservation must be central; if the content is not maintained, issues of ownership and control are moot. Who wants to be in control of nothing?
Services and technologies bring with them responsibility if they are to be sustainable. Alfred de Grazia, a pioneer in personal digital archiving, has reframed the problem as one of “managing intellectual estates.” The beneficiaries are not just the individual user, but also our culture as a whole, and our
descendants. Part of the solution is in an economic model that can be used to sustain and encourage preservation and allow intellectual estates to be maintained. De Grazia focused on the needs of the academic arena. However, with many of us now producing portfolios of mixed-media content for work and being archivists of our own past and those of others, these points are clearly generalizable and more relevant to a broader audience today. As blogger Dave Winer put it, “With all possible humility, I’d like to tell you that a few days after I die my entire Web presence will likely disap-pear…And when my sites disappear, so will my uncle’s. He died in 2003. His site is still accessible because I keep it that way.” He points out that his uncle’s thoughts may not be something the world at large cares about, but if Dave’s uncle were a Nobel Laureate, it would likely change things. In the same post he also points out that most universities do not have a plan for archiving the Web-based content of their professors. Clearly, some folks need to be reminded that the Web is an extensible publishing platform, not an Etch A Sketch.
Digital technology makes it possible to extend the walls of the archive beyond a single space or person, as well as ensure preservation and access in locations around the world in what the Library of Congress is calling a “content stewardship network.” Libraries, museums, and archives will need to collaborate with business interests to build lasting social structures that are sustainable over time. There is much work to be done and many stakeholders to be
engaged and heard in the merging of content from multiple sources.
To close, it is worth pointing to Terry Kuny’s 1997 paper that circled library science networks, warning of a coming digital dark age when our data will be lost and/or irretrievable unless we individually and collectively recognize the vulnerability of digital data and design better tools, procedures, services and policies. We say: Let’s appeal to greed, fear, utopianism, and good design and make sure we prove him wrong.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS Dr. Elizabeth Churchill is a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research leading research in social media. Originally a psychologist by training, for the past 15 years she has studied and designed technologies for effective social connection. At Yahoo, her work focuses on how Internet applications and services are woven into everyday lives. Obsessed with memory and sentiment, in her spare time Elizabeth researches how people manage their digital and physical archives. Elizabeth rates herself a packrat, her greatest joy is an attic stuffed with memorabilia. Jeff Ubois is exploring new approaches to personal archiving for Fujitsu Labs of America in Sunnyvale, California, and to video archiving for Intelligent Television and Thirteen/ WNET in New York. He has been published in First Monday, Release 1.0, Computerworld, the Journal of Digital Information, and D-Lib, and he blogs at http://www.archival.tv.
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March + April 2008
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