Archiving 2019

Archiving 2019 is over and it was great to attend this event for the third time after Berlin (2014) and Riga (2017). This time it took place in Lisbon, I even did some article reviews for it and together with another researcher we were AV chair during the event.

But wait, why is it so interesting?

Good question, let me try to address it.

Personal interest

The conference is interesting to me for many reasons, one simple it’s about archiving and I like that, to be correct I have a strong interest in history and I’m always intrigued when I read or hear the sentence “this was found in the archives…”. As a scientist I can only be curious about the sources, where are they and under which form/format, how are they created/kept, what was/is the followed workflow to do so, what are the challenges involved? So many questions!

From archives to display

To continue on the reasons, having document in digital format means they will very probably be consulted on display, meaning also people will spend more and more time on display and we know it can be damaging for the user, his eyes, phenomenon of eye fatigue because of staring at a display.

I work in display at IRYStec Inc. where we offer software solutions to improve the visibility, readability, visual comfort to the viewer depending of the lighting conditions, display technology, content displayed and viewer visual properties (i.e. its age and its corresponding ability to perceive contrast). So it is pretty important to me to stay alert regarding the future use of displays and the type of content displayed on them.

About the presentations

The variety of attendees is wide and therefore are the different topics presented, from workflows, open-source initiatives, file format to be employed such as jpg2000, case studies… about 40 presentations and posters, I can’t review all of them, so go the Archiving conference website.

Digitization and digitalization

D&D were often mentioned as the digital version of an original document being nowadays the version available to the user (almost). To those matters a lot of image processing, spectral imaging, color imaging, text recognition OCR, transcription are part of the tools needed and I’m not talking about the research going on materials, physics to improve the physical support on which the archives are saved and/preserved.

Session on preservation

For me the projects related to “how to save the maximum amount of information in case of an apocalypse” were the most fascinating. For example storing everything using QR code printed on film and store somewhere North of Norway under a mountain in “Preserving irreplaceable national digital cultural heritage in the arctic world archive”. Or the research going on magnetic back-up support to be resistant to solar storms on Write Once Read Forever (WORF) media, therefore a test box is sent to the ISS in order to investigate the resistance or resilience of this medium to space conditions, pretty cool and the part of the story explaining how the researcher got access to a shelf in one of the ISS room is equally fascinating.

Session on management and partnerships/collaborations: best practices, lessons learned and case studies

On the other hand, the project “Prioritizing black digital narrative from process to preservation” from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture was answering many other aspects of dealing with archives for the longer time, other than saving what we have before the apocalypse. A project involving a truck equipped with materials for films, pictures scanning for the people. A project of recording local memories, to help finding more about where we are coming from as it can help to pursue our/your journey, to find/understand the place in the world we are living in.

I’m obviously not an historian of the Afro-American people, but I do see the challenge of reconstructing your path to your ancestors when only a few generations ago no written traces of existence were kept because you were not considered as human being. DNA tests exist but they are only one piece of the puzzle. Being able to reconstruct/tell your own story is extremely important and valuable and is a combination of different information such as local story telling, written proofs, DNA analysis. Difficult things to do alone, so why not gathering resources?

Bonus track

Back in my first Archiving participation I do remember the presence of crowd-sourcing. It’s still there. Technologies evolve but aren’t perfect and therefore there is always a need for human verification and validation (soon robot will exist for us). Also the paid human resources are often low, so help from volunteers to verify the automatic image to text is necessary, I heard for the first time the expression transcribe-thon for the action of doing transcription marathon.

Too many things to write down, so check the proceedings. Usually this conference goes with behind the scene tours, I choose the Portuguese Cinematheque tour, pretty cool again. And of course a lot of interesting discussions with people from everywhere, in your face narrow-minded people.

Mostly links to museums and institutions in relationships to the people I met during this event: