I’m one week into my post as Digital Archivist here at Parliament, so I doubt I’ll be offering any ground-breaking insights just yet! But it’s never too early to jump into the conversation, and I look forward to meeting with and talking to lots of you soon.
This role is an internal move – I’m from an information management background – and as I prepared to move teams, I tried to pack up both the things and the ideas that that I thought would be useful.
My previous team operates with a service-oriented model, delegating a lot of day-to-day records management to a devolved network, and focusses on providing that network with training, advice and support whilst acting as a centre of expertise. I’ve been thinking about what we could learn from this approach in the Digital Preservation team, so here are a newcomer’s ideas about where we could be heading...
We want to provide a service.
A well-managed repository will always be at the heart of what we do, but we can’t stop there. To thrive in an organisational context, we need to provide a range of services that can’t be removed without the organisation feeling the loss. I want to explore earlier intervention into information held locally by offices, and define and codify what we can contribute to internal risk management, assurance, accreditation and procurement processes. We already provide advice on digitisation and digital continuity, but we need to increase the visibility of our expertise. Our move towards a service-oriented mindset is key – we’re keen to start thinking critically about (and communicating) what we’re really offering now, not just what we can offer in the future.
We need to advocate, and not just to the executives.
At this stage, our advocacy for what we do has to go beyond convincing senior management of its inherent value. It also has to make the case for new approaches, and change people’s expectations of what the archive is there for. We need to make the case for different points of intervention, embedding digital preservation principles into processes across the organisation by working with allied professions and other interested teams. It’s also essential that we dedicate time and energy to advocacy efforts closer to home – within the Parliamentary libraries, compliance teams, and within our own office.
Digital Preservation should be a Business-as-Usual activity across our whole office.
One of the things we absolutely have to get right is involving the wider Parliamentary Archives in digital preservation work. Yes, there is a skills gap across the ‘traditional’ archive sector, which is a challenge and it’s one that shouldn’t be underestimated. However, I genuinely believe that to focus on technical skills as a barrier undermines the real issue - I think the real gap to be bridged isn’t technical, but imaginative. We have talented and capable colleagues who understand the importance of digital preservation in theory, but feel alienated or uninspired when it comes to practice. Sector-wide, I think that’s probably one of the reasons it’s taken so long to offer any serious challenge to the digital simulation of paper processes. We need to bring our colleagues along with us by offering positive, realistic opportunities to contribute to digital preservation work to all staff, specialists and non-specialists alike. Only practical exposure to the realities of digital preservation can create an understanding of why things have to change.
I'd love to hear any thoughts, comments or advice! I'm especially interested to hear from anyone who's delivered internal training on practical topics (like ingest or quality assurance) to users without a digital preservation background
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