I was lucky enough to have two days in London last week to attend two separate but linked events: the first was a Jisc sponsored workshop on Digital Appraisal and the second an Archivematica UK User group meet up. It was a nice balance of activities, Day One was around the theory of how we decide what to keep or what to throw away and Day Two was about sharing experiences of using Archivematica – a digital preservation tool which can potentially help us with aspects of this.
Wednesday was a day at the University of Westminster – founded in 1838 in their beautiful buildings at 309 Regent Street.
This event – kindly sponsored by Jisc – designed to bring together digital preservation practitioners to discuss and explore approaches to the theory and practice of the managing digital archives. Chatham House Rules applied so there was freedom to discuss practice in an open and honest way. The morning session comprised of two presentations. The first focussed on the theory of appraisal, that is how we make decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. The second explored practical experiences of the same and reflecting on the change that those who are responsible for managing and looking after records have experienced in the move to the digital age.
For the afternoon session we reflected on what we had heard in the morning and were divided into smaller groups and invited to discuss the approaches we took to appraising both digital and physical collections. It was a good chance to share experiences of tools which we found useful and difficulties we encountered.
For me it was a great opportunity to meet people out there actually “doing preservation” using a wide variety of tools. Sometimes when people use one software package or another it can have the effect of dividing them into camps. It’s really important to be able to meet up with and share experiences of others who are in a similar position – as witnessed at the Archivematica Meeting the next day – but it also good to hear a diversity of experience. There was a strong feeling that any tools, workflows and ways of working are likely to change and develop rapidly, paralleling rapid technological changes, so that anything we opt for now is necessarily only a “temporary” solution. We have to learn to work in a state of flux and be dynamic in our approaches to preservation.
Day two was the Archivematica UK User group this time hosted by Westminster School. I’ve blogged before about this group when we hosted here at Lancaster University. Yet another fantastic setting for our meeting another brilliant opportunity to discuss our work with colleagues from a wide range of institutions.
The morning session involved the sharing of workflows and in a nice parallel to the previous day’s session, talking about appraisal!
Lunch was back-to-school in the canteen but I’m pleased to report that school dinners have certainly moved on since I remember them!
In the afternoon there were a selection of presentations – including one that I gave to update people on our work at Lancaster as part of the Jisc RDSS to create a reporting tool – DMAonline – which will work with Archivematica to give added reporting functionality. One of the attractive things about Archivematica as a digital preservation tool, is that it is Open Source so that it allows for development work to happen parallel to the product and to suit all sorts of circumstances.
We also heard from Hrafn Malmquist at University of Edinburgh talking about his recent work with Archivematica to help with preserving the records of the University Court. Sean Rippington from the University of St Andrews talked to us about experimenting with exporting Sharepoint files and Laura Giles from the University of Hull talked about documenting Hull’s year as City of Culture.
We were also lucky enough to get a tour of Westminster School’s archive which gave the archivist Elizabeth the chance to show off her favourite items, including the wonderful Town Boy ledger which you can discover for yourself here.
All in all it was a very useful couple of days in London which gave me a lot to think about and incorporate into my practice. Having time to reflect on theoretical approaches in invaluable and rarely achieved when the “day job” is so busy and I am grateful to have had the time to attend.
Rachel MacGregor
