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A complete rethink
Documentary products are neither physical nor static
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'Ancestry built the linkages from the known to the unknown, linkages that would not be possible without computer technologies.
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. Today, access generally happens first, before description.
And description may not happen at all. How many of us have a
dozen or more different digital photographs, downloaded at
various times from our cameras onto our computers, several of
which share the same auto-generated title - DSC-011 or
IMG-002? Further, in this digital world, preservation may not be
a conscious act of setting aside but instead the result of digital
multiplication and mass dissemination. Storage in and access
through an archival repository may in fact never happen at all.
Let me illustrate the reality. It is estimated that the number of
cell phones in the world will read 7.3 billion this year. This
means that there will be more cell phones in use than there
are people on the planet. I cannot argue that statistic. My
two-person household alone contributes five phones to the
count. And we don't just use those cell phones to talk, do we?
Individuals, in their work and home lives, are using the
multiplicity of apps and tools on their cell phones and other
32 2015 nummer 1