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- Convenors:
-
Lauri Harvilahti
(Finnish Literature Society)
Kelly Fitzgerald (University College Dublin)
- Stream:
- Archives
- Location:
- A125
Short Abstract:
The panel Archives, Digital Collections, On-Line Databases and the Internet invites papers on following issues: •on-line databases and digital corpora •the Internet and Social Media in collecting data •web-based crowd-sourcing actions •preservation: standards in file formats and metadata
Long Abstract:
Archives, Digital Collections, On-Line Databases and the Internet
Archives are turning digital as original (analog) materials have been digitized in order to protect and secure the items. The Internet has opened up entirely new possibilities to make archives accessible for a wide audience. More and more materials of interest for archives are created digitally, either expressly for the archive, as fieldwork recordings, or as products of cultural expression and communication. The central role of a digital archivist differs greatly from an archivist that works with traditional (analog) material. There is a crucial need for on-line cataloguing in order to create linked databases. It is important to create an international list of metadata for a traditional archive.
We are inviting participants of the panel Archives, Digital Collections, On-Line Databases and the Internet to present papers on following issues:
• on-line databases and digital corpora: the challenge of creating common platforms and solutions
• potential of the Internet and Social Media for collecting data
• web-based crowd-sourcing actions and collection campaigns
• preservation of digital items: standards in file formats and metadata
The aim of the working group on archives is to share and disseminate the knowledge and experience of the various archives on these questions, to discuss standards and practices, and to facilitate the cooperation and enhance the interoperability of archives. Fulfilling these tasks for the future will be difficult without forming creating proper criteria and practices for creating and maintaining digitized records and for digital-born culture, including the ephemeral world of the Internet.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Lauri Harvilahti (Finnish Literature Society)
Paper short abstract:
At the beginning of the 20th century, international indexing and cross-referencing type-systems were developed for folklore archiving and research. The platform that I suggest could be for the digital age what those systems were for the earlier era.
Paper long abstract:
An international platform for digital corpora
At the beginning of the twentieth century, international indexing and cross-referencing type-systems were developed for folklore archiving and research that have now advanced to international standards. The platform that I suggest in my paper could be developed in a common project, and could be for the digital age what those systems were for the earlier era, informed by an intervening century of insights and understandings.
There is a need for a versatile www-infrastructure that would provide a platform for digital corpora of oral traditions with an ergonomic user-interface allowing searches within a particular tradition, and across the oral traditions of multiple cultures according to a diverse range of criteria. Based on repositories, distributed possibly in different countries, the idea of linked oral tradition could be put forward in a new way.
One relevant direction for future research would involve advancing the typological units from tradition-dependent to cross-cultural typologies. The potential of the digital corpora, the semantic web technologies and the methodology of textual analysis will enable the creation of a model for an international platform of oral tradition. This will be possible by using metadata schemes that are machine-readable and language independent. The new type of platform could be applicable for a fully multidisciplinary range of studies. The development and application of the common scheme could be undertaken in conjunction with comparative research on oral traditions in order to test and develop the scheme's relevance and applicability for diverse types of research priorities.
Anna Bale (National Folklore Collection) Gearóid Ó Cleircín (Dublin City University) Úna Bhreathnach (Dublin City University) Brian Ó Raghallaigh (Dublin City University)
Paper short abstract:
The NFC’s vast collection of folklore, ethnological and cultural material is being made available online, through collaboration with Fiontar, Dublin City University. This paper will examine the issues involved in such a project. Anna.Bale@ucd.ie www.duchas.ie http://www.ucd.ie/irishfolklore/en/
Paper long abstract:
Ireland's National Folklore Collection has faced many changes since its inception in 1935. In this paper the many cultural, political, linguistic and ideological reasons that led to systematic collection of oral tradition in Ireland at that time will be looked at briefly, but more importantly the current extent and composition of the archive will be examined.
The Dúchas Project - which began as a pilot project in 2013 - has undertaken the daunting task (considering the quantity and variety of the material) of creating a digital online version of the collection.
The impact of such a project on an archive, which, for the most part, had been in custodial mode and now finds itself in the throes of mass dissemination, has been intense. The day to day reality of dealing with issues such as data modelling, metadata, vocabularies, data protection, standards and interoperability etc. have made significant changes in work practices.
Other considerations are the unforeseen uses of the data once available in digital form and the interaction from the public due to online accessibility. Two supplementary projects have already been developed from the initial project, the first being a searchable index of Irish surnames and the second, a pilot crowd-sourcing project inviting users to transcribe up to 20,000 stories in Irish using software developed in-house; this tool will be used as an educational resource, both for Irish-language and for folklore studies.
This paper will outline the experience and implications of digitization on a large multifaceted institutional archive thus far.
Rita Grīnvalde (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia)
Paper short abstract:
The paper seeks to provide a historical overview of the folklore digitizing processes in Latvia and the analysis of the new digital archive of Latvian folklore, www.folklore.lv.
Paper long abstract:
The folklore digitizing processes in Latvia date back to 1990s. There have been both periods of very intensive work and more or less calm phases. Up to present day, the intention has been not just to make safe digital copies of the archived originals but also to bring the collected contents back to society, namely, to bring folklore from the shelves of the Archives to the Internet.
There have been endeavours to cover particular segments of the voluminous holdings of the Archives of Latvian Folklore. Over several years, the analog photos, drawings and sound recordings have been made digital. The text corpora of some folklore genres (such as the collection of proverbs) have been rewritten and made available online. One of the greatest digitizing projects of the first decade was www.dainuskapis.lv, the Cabinet of Folksongs obtained by Krišjaņis Barons (more than 268 000 songs by hundreds of collectors).
The new digital archive of Latvian folklore, www.folklore.lv, started in 2014. Its goal is to make available online almost everything kept in the holdings of the Archives of Latvian Folklore. The digital archive provides convenient online access to all kinds of materials - manuscripts, images, audio and video recordings. It is planned to add more valuable collections in the future.
Katrina Wynn (University of Maine)
Paper short abstract:
Standardization is important to digital curation. We want to follow best practices so our digital archives are of high quality, safe, and sustainable, but technology changes so swiftly that standards are hard to develop. Discussions like this will help shape the future of digital cultural archives.
Paper long abstract:
Despite being a relatively new field, and one that by its very nature changes rapidly, standardization is a major concern in digital curation. As a digital archivist, I want to follow the best standards possible so that the Maine Folklife Center's (MFC) archives are digitized correctly and conserved properly. However, there are few digital practices that have been accepted as "archival standard." The best practices are concepts: duplication, checks, and migration. Technology changes so swiftly that standards for format and metadata are hard to develop.
The long-term preservation of digital material needs detailed metadata to support it. For that to be truly effective, the metadata needs to be in a standard format that doesn't rely on institutional memory. Happily, there seems to be progress in the standardization of metadata for archives. Many people use or take into consideration The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. It is used, for example, by Digital Commons, which is one of the on-line database formats the Maine Folklife Center has chosen to participate in for public access to its collections. Even within their Dublin Core based metadata, I found we needed to modify the elements to fit our needs as a cultural archive.
As Archives Manager of the MFC, I have overseen the digitizing of our collection, set digital policies, and explored a number of on-line databases. I would like to share what I learned from those experiences with the community as we work to set international standards for digital cultural archives.
Cliona O'Carroll (University College Cork)
Paper short abstract:
Challenges faced by heritage archives regarding digital preservation and access, and discipline-specific understandings of the nature of context and interpretation in engagement with qualitative data, are discussed as relevant to (and perhaps neglected by) the broader area of digital humanities.
Paper long abstract:
How is it possible to render multi-layered, intensely qualitative and often intimate narrative representations of everyday life 'discoverable' online in a way that is meaningful and ethically sound? This question, faced by the Cork Folklore Project regarding their archive of 500+ folklore/oral history audio interviews, is explored using the CFP's experience of constructing an online catalogue as a case study. Expectations on the part of the public and the digital humanities community are examined, and the interplay between digital access provision, the ideal of 'informed consent' and duty of care towards material and people are discussed. The range of models open to cultural archives is broad and sometimes bewildering; from the archive with archivist regulating flows both in and out in as guard, gatekeeper or caretaker, to the online open repository where contributors have full control over shaping what they put up (and take down) in deliberately-authored acts of self-representation. In this context, which of our assumptions and understandings about 'the archive', many of which stem from a long process of debate and reflection, should we re-examine, and which should we reassert? I suggest that folklore archivists have a role to play in asserting the value of our understanding of context and interpretation in the case of qualitative data, in order to contribute to conversations about long-term preservation and access regarding qualitative material across the academic disciplines and in the sphere of heritage.
Evangelos Karamanes (Academy of Athens) Aikaterini Polymerou-Kamilaki (Academy of Athens) Paraskevas Potiropoulos (Academy Of Athens) Ioannis Karachristos (Academy of Athens)
Paper short abstract:
After a short overview of aims, research and studying methods of the HFRC, we discuss its contemporary policies concerning the creation and maintenance of digital records and their dissemination through on-line databases that confront the challenge of common metadata standards.
Paper long abstract:
The Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of Athens (HFRC), established in 1918 constitutes the National Documentation Centre for traditional and contemporary Greek Culture. Apart from field researches, publications and conferences, its activities include interdisciplinary research projects, exhibitions, academic support for museums and for cultural bodies, and other events.
The diffusion and circulation of digital ethnographic content coming from different agents - cultural stock holders, educational institutions, collective bodies (associations, unions, etc.) and individuals is a permanent preoccupation. Current projects of the HFRC include the development of innovative tools and interfacial means for access to digital content, the creation of a specialized knowledge framework and the interoperability of digital HFRC's collections, which will be associated with the international standards. Additionally, the creation of an interactive portal could make the dissemination of the digital archive much easier and allow interactive communication with the Centre for both specialist researchers and the general public. Finally, the proposed organization and management of the archive offers new possibilities in research and supports the dialogue between the researchers and the society, remodeling ultimately the very notion of the archive itself.
Daniela Vesić (University of Arts Belgrade)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines some of the new definitions of archive in digital context comparing them to an archive in the traditional sense of the word. It explores the ways of understanding archive and its position in two worlds of old and new media.
Paper long abstract:
The paper aims at presenting new ways of thinking and writing about archives which coincided with huge technological developments. As is well known, in contemporary age the archive-notion is notably re-articulated. From the standard view, which often evokes obsolete and abandoned places full of drawers and shelves laden with old documents, archive and the archival terminology became a metaphor for a lot of our software-based interaction.
The texts discusses the digital archive concept. The concept itself raises some of the following questions: What does digital archive mean when most rudimentary components of classical (state) archives since ancient times have been tied to written texts - that is to the letters of the vocal alphabet? Is the term digital archive an appropriate term, if one takes into account that "digital" and "archive" are clashing notes because they refer to the basic, and opposite, characteristics: openness versus closeness, passive storage versus active use, stable sources versus updating, and the paradigmatic predominance of the written or printed document, versus the abstract numerical super-code of zeros and ones? As all these oppositions point to the differences between analogue and digital world, the questions mentioned above will be discussed within the context of relation between old and new media.
Risto Järv (Estonian Literary Museum)
Paper short abstract:
The talk discusses problems related to the creating of an online version of the database of Estonian folk tales based on the folk tale collections of the Estonian Folklore Archives and issues arising in linking it with the digital archives of the Estonian Literary Museum.
Paper long abstract:
On the basis of the folklore collections of the Estonian Folklore Archives at the Estonian Literary Museum a significant number of genre-based online databases and portals have been created in the course of time. Due to the foci of interest of different teams and to project-based financing the databases have largely been genre-based or have had other definite limits. Starting from 1999 a folk tale work group has been active jointly at the University of Tartu and the Estonian Literary Museum. In addition to preparing folk tale publications and working on typology, its activities have included the creation of a database of folk tales. All in all, by now it contains over 10,000 folk tales.
In 2014-2015 on the basis of the typological database of folk tales was created an online database of Estonian folktales. In the course of this different problems arised - how to link the existing corpus of folk tale texts and the biographical database of fairy tales in a manner convenient to the user, how to relate it to the database of collectors and informants that has been formed partly on the basis of other analogous folklore databases. The key issue was linking the folk tale database to the digital archives "Kivike" of the Estonian Literary Museum that encompass different departments of the ELM, covering metadata, scanned manuscript files and texts fed to digital format.
Emese Ilyefalvi (Eötvös Loránd University)
Paper short abstract:
In my paper I will introduce and discuss the upcoming online Hungarian incantation database, which contains texts from the 15th century till nowadays.
Paper long abstract:
Incantation is one of the most heterogeneous folklore genres, thus it is not suprising that no unified or international indices have been created in European folkloristics yet. A part of the national text editions classified charms by function (e.g. charms used against toothache, fever, bleeding, beekeeping etc.), the other part grouped them along text structure or created mixed systems. This is a hindering factor for comparative-folkloristic researches besides the language barrier.
In my paper I will introduce the upcoming online Hungarian incantation database, which contains texts from the 15th century till nowadays. This database is made up of all metadata, contextual and other information related to texts, such as function, form, language, place of origin, type of source materials, typological classification, ethnic name, gestures to perform, analogies, informants, collectors, place of collection, picture of the manuscript etc. This online database, besides aiding further research to carry out complex historical-functional and comparative historical folkloristic investigations, can also be used to sort the database by any criteria (form, function, content, etc.) to promote multiple and combined searches.
Daria Voyloshnikova (University of Fribourg)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the methodology applicable in the frames of an Internet-based anthropological research, as well as digital opportunities in complementing traditional field research.
Paper long abstract:
The purpose of the paper is twofold: to demonstrate in what ways a researcher in Anthropology can benefit from the sharing practices at the Global Agora and to overview the methods of studying 'digital aborigines' in their habitat. Thus, both contact and noncontact methods of 'dragging' data with the Net are examined.
The former comprise a variety of tools: from bilateral exchange with distanced informants to issue-specific crowd-sourcing.
The latter represent traditional observation and immersion techniques transformed to meet the requirements of the new research environment. A few decades ago humans started living digital lives within the Internet space, producing and disseminating new practices, language, and a peculiar folklore. From a student's perspective, social reboundering occurring (to a large extent via social networks) in the 'no-locus' of the Internet is of major interest because of the analytical opportunities it offers.
Being an anthropologist's duty, studying the digital manifestation of our civilization is to be grounded on a viable and comprehensive data gathering and interpretation methodology.
Hence, the paper includes an insight from the experience of combing a professional digital marketer's techniques with the anthropological research scope. It touches upon the matters of the anonymity/ emphatic identity manifestation of the informant, the border condition of the researcher, and the reliability of data collected.