Session 1 (management)

Symposium Chat - Session 1: Management, Friday 1.30-3.00pm

Proposals

• O'Meara
• Thomas
• Fay
• Redwine (Failure)
• McKay
• Forstrom

Notes

1^st generation of earchivists. Early 2000 big hire of e-archivists. Lots of other curators wiped their hands and decided they didn't have to deal with that.

Watershed moment – need to push it back out to the community (all archivists).

Multiple colls and multiple curators.

Marketing to curatorial and tech staff, so they are comfortable with new workflows. Know their processes.

Lots of comprises needed.

Gretchen – similar experiences. Lib background but not arch or tech background. Translation function between departments. Not feasible to fund translator position forever.

Ideal of interPARES didn't seem possible to implement when on the ground. (Erin)

Now more practical than theoretical. Good basis for making compromises.

How to make it the norm?

Educate and inform existing staff

develop interpretation skills

not nec in people's jd to work together but this necessary to progress

distinction between archivists and digital archivists? What is the norm?

Hiring staff for technical competencies rather than for value as archivists. So can't be trusted to provide input on more general strategy (e.g. processing).

We are the bottleneck. After disk imaging it's the role of other archivists to do the work.

Archives have used specialists before (e.g. photographic), which later became part of wider roles. How many institutions are ready for this now?

Change may filter through as new staff come into institutions.

A&D – can't differentiate between different formats.

No vendor solution for data extraction that we are comfortable with. How do we start formulating vendor requirements?

Balance between generalisable workflows and idiosyncrasies

division of labour between archives, libraries and museum is artificial.

How do we provide guidance on the whole spectrum of content? Not all of us will cater for cultural materialsim. This is what we can so – gold, silver and bronze levels.

Collections and record creators that deserve the gold treatment, and ones that don't.

Use of carriers that are effectively cereal boxes.

Customer service element. Ask curators to find out where the donor's content is, then Seth will get it out.

What shld be common knowledge and experiences for curators? Technical services cataloguers?

Moving image and visual materials archivists are specialists too.

How do we get the institution to adapt without losing the good stuff that we do. How do we operationalise it?

Address why we're doing it. Has to be present in the high level strategy.

Impact of size of organisation. Archivists do survey of everything, but not responsible for their preservation. (Catherine H). 10/120 archivists who've used the digital processing room.

Archivists can be offended by prescriptive approach. Use weekly staff meetings – take theoretical issues to bigger group for input. e.g. photographing media – to do or not? When and why?

Is there time for all the discussions we'd like to have? Competing priorities.

Reason for the variations in role between institutions. Is there an optimal model? How should the unit be organised? Variation in size of operation, different business drivers.

Smithsonian – group of 20 or so. Always some folks who are better are particular things.

Customer service may be a driver for integration of digital? Can't have single point of failure when dealing with enquiries.

Web archiving. Collect web sites to link to hybrid archives.

How much does the digital archivist need to know about the lifecycle of the object? May help define the skill-sets.

Depends on maturity of program.

Yale – already looking at how work can be reallocated so throughput can be increased, Use of paraprofessionals for routine imaging. Das spread to thin. Need workflows and systems for this.

Range of infrastructure and skills for traditional archives work.

Dependent on funds available. Especially difficult if new staff on project timelines (training costs).

Harder to operationalise in contexts where we can't retain staff.

Use of FTK – Peter conducted workshop for 8 spec colls folk to spread skills. You tube video too.

Fear of losing experienced digital staff. Need to better communicate this risk to management level.

Matrix approach – building skills throughout archive staff.

What are the skills? Building the 5.25” floppy workstation. Not for everyone!

What about lack of tools? Convincing management that dedicated IT support required.

Draw on all relevant divisions in working group. Who can be champions in their divisions. Provide wider input.

Who should be on these soft teams? How to define roles? How to formalise? Managing intersections between departments.

Levels of preservation offered? Define through dialogue between curatorial staff and technical staff.

How do we avoid burnout for members of our community? Rate is very high. Stuff just gets tacked on, and on, and on...

Need to institutionalise cross-functional teams. To what degree can you rely on informal assistance?

Need to acknowledge how much work is involved in collaborating across the university – so it's not invisible work.

Status of digital archivists. Tend to be younger. Not at the right level of management. Can't effect the necessary changes.

Burnout is a HR issue?

Mentoring is key to being a digital archivist. Training others.

Risk of overformalising things.

How do we move away from expectations of perfection. Iterative development is much more realistic.

Behave more like agile development in archives. Acknowledge that further work could be done (and could be desirable).

Risk to reputation if you don't do a good job.

Good enough/due diligence (e.g. mass digitisation)

Build a backlog as a way of advocating for resources.

Access is the driver for resources (customer service), Scholarly need.

Donor pressures for access.

What about resources. What old stuff can we stop doing to liberate funds for new work?