One of the most revolutionary things I was told in my academic career was when my year 10 Social Studies teacher revealed that throughout her time at university she only ever accessed resources online. I was in shock, as a fourteen year old in 2014 all I had ever been told about internet resources surrounded their lack of reliability, and I was encouraged to use good old books instead. Despite all I have learned and experienced since then, including earning my undergraduate degree, that revelation sticks out. This was when I began to understand the goldmine that is the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) sector in the digital age.
Digital archives
Digital archives are archives from the GLAM sector that exist online. Historical materials have been digitised and assigned appropriate metadata allowing people to view these materials from the comfort of their home, desk, bath, wherever!
Digital Archives reflect one of the ways the GLAM sector has evolved with new and exciting opportunities for digitisation. This allows the materials they hold to be viewed and the data held within them utilised throughout the world. Essentially people have less of a need to travel to members of the GLAM sector for research, as the archives come to them. This is a particularly important innovation as it has lessened the association between power and access to information(1).
Some projects such as Museums NZ and Europeana also act as a hub for historical material to be digitised and published online from a variety of different members of the GLAM sector. This means that the archive holds a lot of the digitised collections from a specific geographic area all in one place. This has a plethora of benefits. One such benefit is that the digital infrastructure can be created and maintained all at once, leaving smaller members of the GLAM sector able to maintain their sources with similar chances of being found as bigger members(2). Sources from a particular topic can also be grouped together regardless of the geographic location of the source itself. This allows historians to examine sources on one subject in the context of others that are similar(3).
The challenges of digital archiving
While digital archiving reduces the need for physical space there is considerable computer power and space needed to run such an operation. A level of skill is involved in terms of constructing and maintaining the archive(4). Of course the same is true for physical archives, but digital archives provide a unique challenge in the way in which they exist in a rapidly changing world where the maintainer of the archive has to fight to keep up and stay relevant.
A local solution to this is ehive. New Zealand based ehive software allows members of the GLAM sector to create a digital presence while they contend with the technical aspects of such a challenge. Notably, this is a method that Museums NZ uses. Unfortunately, this comes with an ongoing monetary cost, and some stifling of creative control in the archive itself(5).
Fortunately, as previously mentioned smaller museums have been able to overcome some of these challenges by working with others in projects like Europeana.
Another challenge is data sovereignty. Historical materials and artefacts are of significant cultural importance to some degree. Therefore it is important for information and digitised material to be handled appropriately, without preventing that group from accessing the benefits of digitisation(6).
A culturally appropriate solution
Mukurtu archival software developed specifically for indigenous communities. For a variety of reasons individuals communities and groups may not want all information that is digitised to be accessible to everyone(7). This can allow groups to reap the benefits of digital archiving without breaking with cultural traditions and protocols. This software is open source and free to use on github taking away the economic barriers that can be associated with accessing such a resource if the user is sufficiently skilled(8).
Mukurtu reflects how the GLAM sector is able to look and act differently as needs arise. This software allows both the metadata and descriptions that would be seen in the general GLAM sector institutions while adding traditional knowledge labels to the artefact(9). These labels can be added by various members of the community and have been described as making the archive itself a social tool, transcending traditional archival methods(10).
This is exciting, demonstrating how the structure of digital archives themselves can be shaped to fit the sources, instead of making the sources fit into the archive.
Endnotes
1. M. Horwood, 'Going digital in the GLAM sector: ICT innovations & collaborations for
2. NZ Museums, https://www.nzmuseums.co.nz/, accessed 9 July 2022.
3. Europeana, https://www.europeana.eu/en , accessed 9 July 2022.
4. Ehive, https://info.ehive.com/take-a-tour/, accessed 9 July 2022.
5. ibid
6. K. Christen, ‘Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous
7. Centre for digital scholarship and curation, “Introduction to Mukurtu Content
8. ibid
9. ibid
10. ibid