Summary
The DPC invites you to join a briefing on capturing and preserving web and social media content as part of individual or community archives.
The day will feature speakers who will share their experiences – from crawling the web presence of major figures to the curation of web-based art events that occur on multiple platforms at once.
Attendees will have the opportunity to hear first-hand from practitioners who have begun to incorporate web and social media content in individual and event- or group- based archival collections.
Those in the room will also learn techniques for capturing and preserving their own web and social media content – from websites to Twitter feeds.
This event will be live streamed and recorded.
Description
‘Like paper archives, digital files might include memories of a life-long friendship; life stories that communicate a particular social, political, cultural, or religious perspective; health or financial information that may be of interest to both immediate family and future historians; or all of the above. The power of a personal digital archive lies in an individual’s ability to assess the personal value of their own files and determine a course of action for safeguarding them and deciding the extent to which they want to share them with family, friends, a cultural heritage institution, or even directly online.’
-Gabriela Redwine, Personal Digital Archiving, DPC Technology Watch Report
Personal digital archives, as Redwine describes above, serve many different purposes and possess value for a broad range of individuals, families, researchers, and collecting institutions. But as the passage above indicates – personal digital archives are only as valuable as the ability to find, search, and use them.
Redwine’s report, along with other practical resources, addresses approaches and strategies for archiving many of the types of digital content individuals create in their daily lives – from Word documents to digital photos.
However, the available guidance – both for individuals and for the archivists who intake the personal collections of politicians, scientists, artists, authors, and other public figures – lacks specific strategies and procedures for the capture of personal web and social media content.
The need for this guidance has become more urgent. People increasingly use the web and social media platforms in their daily work and interactions. Artists and designers increasingly turn to these platforms as a form of artistic or literary expression.
This briefing day will help address the growing needs of individuals and institutions for guidance in capturing the rich, diverse, and complex records created through the web and social media platforms.
Participants at the workshop will:
- Learn about the experiences of other institutions who have begun collecting web and social media as part of individual or small community-based collections
- Gain insight into the decision-making of other institutions who have tackled the challenge of implementing new methods and tools for capturing complex web-based content
- Hear some context about the legal and ethical issues that accompany the capture and preservation of user-generated content
- Learn about current technical challenges and available solutions through speaker presentations and tool tutorials
- Observe the functionality and scope of available open source solutions through a tutorial session that showcases strategies for archiving web and social media content
Who should come?
This workshop will interest:
- Archivists, librarians, curators or data managers currently collecting web and social media content or that plan to collect these forms of content
- Digital preservation specialists and repository managers
- Individuals with an interest in curating and preserving their own web-based content
- Information professionals interested in new developments in digital preservation and community engagement
- IT professionals with a focus on digital preservation
Programme and Recordings
10.00 Registration, Tea & Coffee
10.30 Welcome & Introduction by Chair, Sara Day Thomson (DPC)
10.45 Case Study: Community Archives and Preservation , Sharon Webb (University of Sussex)
11.15 Case Study from the British Library , Nicola Bingham & Helena Byrne (British Library)
11.45 Case Study on Collecting & Curating Digital Posters Using Mixed Approaches , Anisa Hawes
12.15 Lunch
13.00 Approaches & Tools: Introduction to DIY Web & Social Media Archiving , Sara Day Thomson
13.20 DIY: HTTrack & Social Media Platform Self-Archive Functions , Sara Day Thomson
14.00 Rhizome’s webrecorder (zipped), Anisa Hawes
14.30 Comfort Break
15.00 Social Media Archiving with Social Feed Manager , Laura Wrubel & Dan Kerchner (George Washington University, joining virtually)
15.45 Overview & Questions
16.00 Close
Can't make it in person?
As the content of this event will be useful for personal and community archivists, we have made the recordings of this event open to the digital preservation community.
Digital Preservationists Anonymous
For DPC Members only, we also invite you to join us on the evening of 5 December in London (evening before the briefing day), for a meeting of Digital Preservationists Anonymous. This will entail an evening of frank discussions about digital preservation challenges among a supportive community of peers at a nearby watering hole. We will get started at 17.00 and close at 19.00. Hope to see you there. For more information and to register: http://bit.ly/2RjLkL8
DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy
The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. It encourages diversity in all its forms and is committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation. The DPC asks all those who are part of this community and/or attending a DPC event be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.
Follow the event on Twitter using #dpcwebsm18
Event header image used with permission of www.digitalbevaring.dk.