tangle - it becomes important to allow users to understand such complexity without
overwhelming them with a large mass of information. Archivists are mediators, thus
they are responsible for promoting access actively and providing a perspective that
puts the archival materials in context. Archival representations of provenance in the
form of descriptive finding aids are a major part of this perspective. Therefore,
provenance imbues the mediation tools and affects access. This is why it should be
investigated thoroughly in relation to users' needs.
Appraisal
Appraisal is the process of assessing the value of records for the purpose of
determining the length and conditions of their preservation.5 According to a
widespread approach known as macro-appraisal, this archival function should be
based on "extensive research by archivists into institutional functionality,
organizational structures and work-place cultures, recordkeeping systems,
information workflows, recording media and recording technologies, and into
changes in all these across space and time" (Cook, 2005, p. 103). Provenance covers
several of these dimensions, once we assume that it is more than just origination,
being rather a network of relationships between objects, agents and functions, so
that it can be interpreted in such a broad way to cover even the social dimension.6
As a consequence, any new understanding of the concept of provenance has a direct
impact on appraisal methods and principles.
Arrangement and description
Arrangement and description of archival materials require identification and
description of both the creators and the chain of custody of materials. When
arranging, provenance is the first clue enabling archivists to trace archival materials
back to their origins, identify different bodies of materials, and get to a tentative
grouping. When describing, the complexity of provenance may affect the
representation of the archival materials. This is indeed more true in the digital
realm, where new visualization tools and information models allow for greater
freedom when designing archival descriptions. At the same time, representation
models affect the ways that provenance is understood and represented in archival
descriptions, because they highlight certain features while hiding or obfuscating
others. Moreover, materials on the Internet are not only dispersed but are also mixed
and re-used to a point that it is often difficult to trace provenance. In short,
provenance is a crucial dimension of any arrangement and description process.
Also, with a growing number of records being created and preserved using Cloud
technology, there is a need to consider how to undertake their arrangement and
description in the Cloud. To this end, a research project has been set up in the
broader context of the InterPARES Trust, a "multi-national, interdisciplinary
research project exploring issues concerning digital records and data entrusted to
the Internet,"7 launched in 2013 and led by the University of British Columbia. The
specific project, titled "Arrangement and Description in the Cloud," investigates
how the Cloud environment is going to affect arrangement and description theory
and practice.8 Only a preliminary analysis of the problem has been conducted so far,
yet some interesting observations have emerged from such analysis.9
a. Archives are beginning to implement and develop services that capture records
from Cloud-based services such as providers of email and social media services.
Generally, a software application will connect to the Cloud service using
whatever method the service provider specifies. In the case of social media, the
capture tool connection is likely to interact with Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs) that operate according to rules defined by the service provider.
Using tools such as ePADD, Social Feed Manager, ArchiveSocial (itself a Cloud
service), Thinkup, or the Twitter Archiving Google Sheet, a record is fixed in
place by a Cloud provider such as Google, or social media services like Twitter,
Instagram, Flickr, and Facebook.10 Such tools collect vast amounts of metadata
of potential value in tracking not only the origin and use of a particular tweet,
but also regarding how the archivist shaped the collection. However, tweet-
specific metadata may be stored in a way that makes them transparent to the
other applications. For example, the Social Feed Manager stores metadata in
WARC files,11 which means that whatever provenance or other metadata exist
for a tweet is kept in a JSON format as part of a WARC file. In other words,
such provenance metadata is not immediately known to the database-driven
parts of the application. In addition, resources that are referenced in the tweet,
either as embedded or external content (e.g., images, videos and webpages), are
captured in the WARC file. In theory, many types of metadata at all levels could
be controlled in an archival descriptive system. However, key questions, such
as which metadata to extract and ingest into the archival management system,
remain to be investigated.
archives in liquid times
5 This is the traditional and consolidated definition of appraisal. "Appraisal [is t]he process of determining
the retention period of records" according to ICA. See International Council on Archives, ISAD(G) 2nd
edition, 10. Similar definitions can be found on the most authoritative sources: the Multilingual Archival
Terminology (MAT) published online by the International Council on Archives defines appraisal as "[t]he
process of identifying materials offered to an archives that have sufficient value to be accessioned." See ICA
MAT, accessed October 6, 2017, http://www.ciscra.org/mat/mat/term/47. The Glossary of Archival and
Records Terminology adopted by the Society of American Archivists provides this same definition along with
a similar one: "[T]he process of determining the length of time records should be retained, based on legal
requirements and on their current and potential usefulness." See Richard Peirce-Moses, A Glossary of
Archival and Records Terminology (Chicago: SAA, 2005), 22. However, in recent years new definitions have
appeared: the so-called ICA Req defined appraisal as "[t]he process of evaluating business activities to
determine which records need to be captured and how long the records need to be kept, to meet business
needs, the requirements of organisational accountability and community expectations." See International
Council on Archives, Principles and Functional Requirements for Records in Electronic Office Environments
(Paris: ICA, 2008), 73. A more disruptive definition appeared in 2017: ISO 15489-1 defines appraisal as
[t]he process of evaluating business activities to determine which records need to be created and captured
and how long the records need to be kept." See ISO 15489-1 Information and documentation: Records
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giovanni michetti provenance in the archives: the challenge of the digital
management: Part 1: Concepts and principles (Geneva: International Organization for Standardization,
2016), 10. However, this brand-new definition is rooted in a specific geo-cultural context and is not agreed
by the archival community at large, so we will refer here to the consolidated definition of appraisal.
6 Vide supra.
7 InterPARES Trust, accessed October 6, 2017, https://interparestrust.org/trust.
8 The research team includes Giovanni Michetti, Richard Peirce-Moses, Chris Prom and Kat Timms.
9 The following three paragraphs are drawn with changes from Christopher Prom, Giovanni Michetti,
Katherine Timms, Andrea Tarnawski and Richard Peirce-Moses, "Archival Arrangement and Description in
the Cloud: A Preliminary Analysis," in Proceedings of XXI Archival Science Colloquium, Marburg, 8 June 2016
(Marburg, DE: Archivschule, in press).
10 EPADD, https://library.stanford.edu/projects/epadd; Social Feed Manager (SFM), http://gwu-libraries.
github.io/sfm-ui/; ArchiveSocial http://archivesocial.com; ThinkUp, https://github.com/ThinkUpLLC/
ThinkUp; Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS), https://tags.hawksey.info. All websites accessed October
6, 2017.
11 Web ARChive (WARC) is an ISO standard for web archiving. This format aggregates multiple digital
resources into a single file together with related information. See ISO 28500:2009 Information and
Documentation: WARC File Format (Geneva: International Organization for Standardization, 2009).
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