Open blog and Archives 2.0

I subscribe to a number of blogs written by Archivists about Archives. Upon reading the latest post by one today I realise that I too am a Archivist writing a blog about Archives, as well research into the field. It is for this reason that I decided to go un-invisible again and let anyone stumble upon this blog. In my previous blogging history, this will mean one stumble and at least 5 spams.

What inspired me was a blog post on Archives Next titled Archives 2.0? This thought provoking post made me realise that my research project is about Archives 2.0 in at least two of the ways that are suggested in the blog post - in that I am an Archivist, working in the field and talking about the use of web 2.0 tools (Youtube), PLUS I am researching the potential of openness and user-centred work in Archives creation. My research is about how users create collections and archives and what 'proper' archives can and should do about it. I guess I am also using web 2.0 tools to promote and 'discuss' my ideas, so am really using Archives 2.0 in three ways.

I have some opinions about why I think Libraries have grabbed a hold of web 2.0, re-branded it Library 2.0 and run away with it like cat and a spoon. Firstly and the most importantly I think it has to do with teaching and literacy. Library is about learning and using tools for learning and understanding new tools for learning and being able to teach people new tools for learning. So web 2.0 tools seem like the most perfect thing for librarians to learn and teach using them. Podcasts make life easier to teach literacy programs. etc etc. I guess it is like learning the lingo of the new world. I am pretty sure university libraries in particular would become fast tracked into nothing if they did not embrace digital tools to help with their teaching. I remember collating some data last year at Curtin Uni about downloads of podcasts and the amount of podcasts downloaded to actual numbers of people attending the class was incredible. Of course no one could say who was downloading podcasts or if one person downloaded most of them because they did not know where they were saving their files (sprung!), but it seemed like the take up of new technologies was successful.

The second thing about libraries is that they are all about people - everything to do with the people and the public and the students and the clients and every person who needs information. Libraries love it and so do librarians. Web 2.0 tools are used by people - again it is the new lingo of people. Go with the people and their trends and they will continue to understand what you have to say. And the difference between Archives and Library?

Archives are definitely not about the people. Archives is about the information or the paper or whatever it is that is in it. Even digital archives are selective in who they let in and of course there is a good reason for this in copyright law etc., but it really seems to me that things like restrictions on information, the withholding period, really is there to protect somebody. People would say that it is the privacy of the people in the records, and this is true to a point. I would say it is the creator agency that is being protected more than anything else. However, that is beside the point I think I am trying to make. Archives are more about power and memory than Libraries are. Archives might feel like they can use web 2.0 tools to provide access (with loads of restrictions) and undertake digital curation activities, but why call it Archives 2.0?

That brings me to the second point. Archives 2.0? Archives have been deconstructing their 'nature' for a little while now and greater understandings and humility of the power that archives have has finally been accepted by the majority (I say this broadly as I am not entirely sure that is has been accepted, but at least people are talking about it). Archives already has an identity crisis and guilty conscience that a Library can never have (unless they behave a bit like an Archive - I am thinking about the National Library of Australia here and in particular the Pandora Project). Archives 2.0 implies to me a great change, a fundamental shift in understanding, in engagement, in power, in creation. Archives is already going through this and it has something to do with digital tools, but also not really, but you cannot separate the two ideas. It is not about digital tools in the sense of web 2.0 but digital as phenomenon; digital as a record. Without that, we would not have had to think hard about what it is that we do and how we do it. Without digital I wonder if there would have been a Continuum model?

So back to my research topic. Is it Archives 2.0? I would not like to call it that because it implies what the usage of the term in archival circles has come to mean - using blogs and wikis and social software to make collections more accessible. I have not read this yet, but saw that this Master's thesis won an award recently - the Pease Award by the SAA for a thesis about Archives using web 2.0 tools. You can find the thesis here: http://etd.ils.unc.edu/dspace/bitstream/1901/470/1/marysamouelian.pdf Is this really Archives 2.0? As the writer of the Archives Next blog says, "To me it appears that the heart of Library 2.0 is a simple acknowledgment that we live in a time of change on many levels, and that the right response is to try to understand our environment and adapt as best we can while continuing to carry out our missions....But from what I can tell, it [Archives 2.0] has always been used to refer to the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in archives, not to the kind of change in perspective that Meredith describes."

I think there is a fundamental change going on, but to equate it to the 'sameness' of Library 2.0 and web 2.0 tools is to somehow not see the whole picture - the shift in Archives Self.

Here is another resource, one I have not taken in either. This one is a lecture I believe, done in 2006. http://archivemati.ca/wp-content/shockwave-flash/SAA2006.html