Computer technology
A complete rethink
Documentary products are neither physical
nor static
As we all know, computers changed the game. Computer
technology has transformed the nature of communications and
information. We all hear the stories of terabytes of data in
cloud computing systems, of billions of text messages sent
and received, and of the constant presence of smartphones
in society. In 1948, the year my husband was born, the first
stored-program computer, nicknamed Baby, was built in
Manchester, England, and it filled an entire laboratory. Today,
my husband and I own two desktops, two laptops, two iPads,
and five cell phones, none of which is named Baby. If we,
with a combined age exceeding 120, can be so dominated
by technology, the world has changed, absolutely.
Today, virtually all of society's records start life in digital
form. But computers, the Internet, and social media networks are
more than tools, and their impact is more than technological.
They are drivers for social and organizational change. They have
transformed how people conduct their business and personal
lives, how they interact, and how they document their actions,
transactions, and communications. Widespread access to digital
and social media tools - not just in developed countries but
everywhere in the world - is breaking down hierarchical models
of governance, changing the essence of social interaction,
and giving people a freedom - as individuals and within
organizations - to create, change, destroy, share, and keep their
ideas, their images, their records however and wherever they
wish, whether those records are innocent byproducts or
intentional creations.
The products of these digital communications and interactions
- the documents we archivists so want to preserve for posterity -
are now directly in the hands of their creators. The custodial,
mainstream recordkeeping institution - which traditionally did
not consider taking records into archival custody until years after
they were created - is an increasingly precarious model in this
new documentary reality. In a digital age, waiting to take
possession of 'old' records - whether official or personal - is to
fight a losing battle. To ensure digital records are available for
use today and in the future, archivists need to undertake a
complete rethink about the concept of archival custody, and
make a radical move away from butchers, grocers, or bakers.
So, we return again to our question. What is the role of the
archivist in documenting this digital society? The suggestion is
that more and more people - individuals, organizations,
governments - are documenting themselves, and that, therefore,
the dynamics have changed. I would argue, though, that groups
within society have always documented themselves, if they have
the capacity, the technology - be it pen and paper - and the
need or desire to do so. Governments created reports and
memoranda themselves, and they still do. Businesses created
financial statements and press releases themselves, and they still
do. Families took photographs themselves. And individuals
wrote letters and diaries themselves. And they still do.
What is different, from a recordkeeping perspective, is not that
groups and individuals within society do or do not document
themselves.What is really different is, first, that so many members
of society are documenting themselves, in such diverse ways and
for so many reasons, and, second, that their documentary
products are neither physical nor static. Which means, to add a
third point of distinction, that archivists can no longer depend on
a traditional linear process: acquisition before preservation,
preservation before description, description before access.
