(4028,1,'2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','Doing undergraduate archival work can be like learning to ride a bike without training wheels. In most classes, the readings and discussions act as essential compasses in guiding the student through the semester. In the archive, most, if not all, bets are off; rarely are there already made tutorials on organizing and making sense of the productive entropy that often marks an archive. How are we to situate a newly discovered text if we have not even finished our undergraduate prerequisite courses?\n\nFor me, the most challenging moments in the archive were the earliest, both because I was adjusting to the demands of archival methods and because I had only a small number of anchoring texts echoing in my head to help me make sense of anything I found. In fact, I probably missed a number of promising leads in the archive because I did not know to look for them.\n\nA good friend and I won a small grant at NYU for a research project about marginalia. We were to trace the marginalia of a particular ancient religious text, the <em>Hermes Trismegistus</em>. While I was scouring libraries in Paris for the history of the text’s early translation, my partner was in New York looking for evidence of contemporary readers’ marks on the book. My job was to plot the ancient scribbles, which seemed easy enough before I actually entered the stacks (see Figure 3). I was looking for the text itself while piecing together others’ accounts of the its migrations. <span class=\"caption right\" style=\"width: 200px; padding-left: 20px;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig3.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2333 \" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" title=\"gotkin_fig3\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig3-190x250.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 3\" width=\"190\" height=\"250\" /></a> Figure 3: Depiction of the god Hermes Trismegistus (courtesy of Roanoke College)</span>\n\nAs it turns out, the <em>Hermes Trismegistus</em> is an enduringly baffling historical object and its ancestry is riddled with gaps. A more experienced researcher would know how to explain this fitful history and perhaps use the inconsistencies and question marks as launching pads for substantive contributions. But since it was my first time in the archive for a sustained and labor-intensive project, they instead weighed on me like chains. Not only did I have trouble tracing the marginalia themselves, I had trouble explaining how I was having trouble.\n\nI realize now that this situation is not so much overcome with academic training as it is more efficiently handled with it. That moment of chaos and crisis is in fact a prerequisite to clear thinking, in my experience. As an undergraduate I was overwhelmed by the disorder of the archival process; but then again, these troubles might have been the best training.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Gotkin 4','Doing undergraduate archival work can be like learning to ride a bike without training wheels. In most classes, the readings and discussions act as essential compasses in guiding the student through the semester. In the archive, most, if not all, bets are off; rarely are there already made tutorials on organizing and making sense of the productive entropy that often marks an archive.','inherit','open','open','','1533-revision-6','','','2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','',1533,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1533-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(4029,1,'2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','In one of my undergraduate courses a professor handed out a checklist for good archival research. The last item on the list was simply, “Get lucky.” My most meaningful archival work has indeed come out of the pleasures of spelunking in archives, hoping to come upon a hidden gem. In my junior year of college I studied abroad in Paris, where I took a class on global media structures. As many graduate-level courses require, the final paper was an individual research project rather than a paper based on class readings and discussions. I knew that my home department in New York offered a course called “Hacker Culture &amp; Politics,” which I ended up taking as soon as I returned. In anticipation of that course, I contacted the professor, Biella Coleman, to ask if she had any contacts in Paris who were working on hacking. After a series of e-mail introductions through friends of friends, I got in touch with the head of a hacker space just outside of Paris.\n<span class=\"caption right\" style=\"width: 200px; margin-left: 20px;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig2.png\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2332\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" title=\"gotkin_fig2\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig2-199x250.png\" alt=\"Figure 2\" width=\"199\" height=\"250\" /></a> Figure 2: Example of a typical French hacker e-zine c. 1994</span>\n\nAlthough I originally intended to study a contemporary aspect of hacking, I ended up with a historical project. After talking with a few French hackers on Internet Relay Chat, it became clear that the early French hacker scene was highly ritualized around electronic magazines, or e-zines. Ultimately, I wrote the paper based on research from about seventy different e-zines sent over digital bulletin board systems and the nascent Internet (see Figure 2). Getting access to the e-zines was not easy, and in the end, I amassed my own archive. Mine was not the image of the archive-as-dungeon, but instead the archive-as-disk-space. Perhaps as difficult to catalog and maintain as any rare book collection (if not more so), the e-zines I collected were infinitely reproducible and accessible from anywhere, even after I left France.\n\nArchival practices change when the historical subject is itself born digital. The challenge of marshaling evidence around a research question is no less important, but the dematerialized archive demands new techniques of investigation. What happens, for example, when we can do archival research from a coffee shop? The absence of the physical walls in a traditional archive might become a new figurative challenge. What is archival work if the archivist is not literally surrounded by material? These are the questions that productively vex my research. Creating the digital archive has been my greatest success because it provided me with a set of substantive and methodological questions that continue to complicate and broaden my research years later.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Gotkin 3','In one of my undergraduate courses a professor handed out a checklist for good archival research. The last item on the list was simply, “Get lucky.” My most meaningful archival work has indeed come out of the pleasures of spelunking in archives, hoping to come upon a hidden gem. In my junior year of college I studied abroad in Paris, where I took a class on global media structures.','inherit','open','open','','1530-revision-6','','','2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','',1530,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1530-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(4030,1,'2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','My experience in the archive directly contributed to my interest in graduate school, which is perhaps unsurprising when you think about the demands of archival work. The move from undergraduate to graduate study shares the guiding principles of archival work. You must first learn what others have said, before delving into the topics that demand further examination. Archival research, in this sense, is the never-ending game of hide-and-seek with that perfect research subject we yen for in each new project, class, and semester.\n\nAside from its importance in training future scholars, archival work is significant even for students who have less professional allegiance to the academy. Original research is a principle worth incorporating in undergraduate course design, as it signifies the marketable job-placement skills that supposedly evidence proper university training. In the 1997 <em>Harper’s Magazine</em> essay “On the Uses of a Liberal Education,” Mark Edmundson suggests undergraduate study has become “lite entertainment for bored college students.” He writes, “University culture, like American culture writ large, is, to put it crudely, ever more devoted to consumption and entertainment, to the using and using up of goods and images.”<sup><a href=\"#_ftn1\">[1]</a></sup> Edmundson goes on to argue that the transactional nature of undergraduate study creates an imbalance between what professors put into a syllabus and what students get out of it. But if we think about archival research as a process of skill development, it just may serve as a corrective to the literal and figurative banking of education.\n\nArchival work is often thought to be methodologically opposed to new media research techniques; thus, the theory goes, undergraduates, as “digital natives,” must learn and maintain a skill set in the archive apart from their new media literacy. How, for example, should undergraduates be expected to navigate the thick mess of a paper archive when Facebook and Twitter are their daily information grounds, where information streams are updated automatically and search boxes are never further than the top of the page? If the job market is increasingly concerned with social media, why should students spend time poring over “dead” technologies? Contrary to the notion that the archive and new media are irreconcilable, we might instead think of them as complementary educational forces. It is no coincidence, for example, that undergraduates in the archive are more likely to be keen and discerning arbiters of information.\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<div id=\"_ftn1\" class=\"footnote\">[1] Mark Edmundson, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: I. As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students,” <em>Harper’s Magazine</em>, September 1997, 40.</div>\n<div></div>\n</div>','Undergraduates in the Archives - Gotkin 2','My experience in the archive directly contributed to my interest in graduate school, which is perhaps unsurprising when you think about the demands of archival work. The move from undergraduate to graduate study shares the guiding principles of archival work. ','inherit','open','open','','1527-revision-6','','','2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','',1527,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1527-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(4031,1,'2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','A few years ago, I was an undergraduate in the archive. In a class called “Dead Media Research Studio” at New York University (NYU), Professor Ben Kafka introduced me to the great quip about the chiasmic imperative of good research: to “make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.” With this echoing in my ears, I found myself in the entrails of Bobst Library interviewing two preservation specialists about a small but intriguing collection of wire recordings. The recordings, I found out, were of rather unknown origins in the early 1950s and contained some controversial tirades against President Truman. Though certainly not an exhaustive archive, the recordings provided me with my first meaningful interaction with historical primary sources. And it was a rather lonely endeavor; the hallways leading to troves of under-researched sources were woefully empty compared to the bustling study lounges located just a few floors above.\n\nMy research on wire recordings ended up as part of a dossier (similar to the format and scope of a Wikipedia entry) I wrote with two classmates for the Dead Media Archive. Professors Ben Kafka and Alex Galloway had rescued this archive from its own ironic demise as an e-mail list created by Bruce Sterling to catalog and describe obsolete technologies. The new Dead Media Archive, technically a wiki platform for simultaneous publishing and editing, became the centerpiece for two classes in the Department of Media, Culture, &amp; Communication (one undergraduate and one graduate). The semester in which I took the class, there were barely ten students enrolled. It puzzled me a bit, since Professor Kafka announced on the first day what every undergraduate seems to dream of hearing: there would be no exams, no papers, and very little reading. Instead, we were to be immersed in the city’s archives for a semester. Each student ended up producing three dossiers for the archive. In addition to one on wire recording, I also wrote an entry on spirit photography, a popular turn-of-the-century practice of “capturing” ghosts on film, which was accompanied by the rise of Spiritualism. A sizeable portion of my hard drive is still taken up by copies of the microform proceedings of the 1869 trial against William Mumler, a New York City spirit photographer accused of fraud (see Figure 1). My final dossier presented a more argumentative take on the “death” of media by cataloging marginalia, the scribbles in a text’s margins, as obsolete relics of a technological paradigm.<span class=\"caption right\" style=\"width: 200px; padding-left: 20px;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig1.png\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2331 alignright\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" title=\"gotkin_fig1\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig1-193x250.png\" alt=\"Figure 1\" width=\"193\" height=\"250\" /></a>Figure 1: Microform copy of the proceedings of a 1869 court case against spirit photographer William Mumler.</span>\n\nBefore arriving at NYU, I would have scoffed at the idea of studying media history. There was much sighing on my first day in the required “History of Communication” course; I imagined, like many fellow undergraduates, that a degree in media studies would help me land a job in New York’s radio, television, or film industries. History, for us, was a roadblock in the path to careers less concerned with the past than with the frenetic present. The thrill of finding primary sources changed my mind. In the archive, I realized the opportunity to conduct original research. The excitement of archival work is shared by undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike; it is the thrill of finding something that has not been thought about enough, and then working hard enough to make it both familiar and strange.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Gotkin 1','','inherit','open','open','','1528-revision-6','','','2013-04-18 21:05:48','2013-04-18 21:05:48','',1528,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1528-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(4032,1,'2013-04-18 21:06:08','2013-04-18 21:06:08','<em>The Vodou Archive</em> is being unveiled currently (spring of 2012) in my course “Introduction to Haitian Vodou.” On a weekly basis, different parts of the archive will be highlighted and students will be expected to visit the digital library to read or view the assigned materials. In order to stress the importance of <em>The Vodou Archive</em> as a digital library, I will also require that students write essays about some of its components. As Florida has numerous active Vodou communities, students will be encouraged to produce materials for the archive, such as photographs or recordings from Vodou ceremonies and rituals.\n\nThe work undertaken in collaboration with undergraduates to produce <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em> and <em>The Vodou Archive</em> has been integrated into the curriculum in numerous ways. For example, students are assigned reading materials that spring from the collaboration. Based on the topics selected for essays, students are encouraged to read or examine parts of <em>The Vodou Archive.</em> For example, students who want to write about how Catholic chromolithographs camouflage Vodou <em>lwa</em> (spirits) are encouraged to visit the selection in <em>The Vodou Archive</em> (<a href=\"http://www.dloc.com/AA00008694/allvolumes2\" target=\"_blank\">click here</a>); other students might need photographic data about Vodou (<a href=\"http://www.dloc.com/AA00005507/00001/thumbs\" target=\"_blank\">click here</a>); other students may need to consult important but hard-to-find works such as Arthur Holly’s (1928) <em>Dra-po</em> (<a href=\"http://www.dloc.com/UF00076958\" target=\"_blank\">click here</a>); finally, some students will want to listen to rare recordings made by Maya Deren held exclusively by <em>The Vodou Archive</em> (<a href=\"http://www.dloc.com/UF00082017\" target=\"_blank\">click here</a>). <em>The Vodou Archive</em> is rich and diverse assemblage of documents; while not all of it can be directly included in the curriculum for all students, individual students are encouraged to branch into the parts of the archive that are relevant to their own work.\n\nAnother way that I will increase student contributions to <em>The Vodou Archive</em> will be through the creation of <em>The Vodou Journal</em>, a planned dimension of the digital archive: ten of the students’ best essays will be submitted to <em>The Vodou Journal</em> for peer review and possible publication. I hope that this unique opportunity for undergraduates to make a significant contribution to the scholarship on Vodou will also stimulate greater attention to writing and introduce undergraduates to the process of scholarly publishing in general.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Hebblethwaite 5','<em>The Vodou Archive</em> is being unveiled currently (spring of 2012) in my course “Introduction to Haitian Vodou.” On a weekly basis, different parts of the archive will be highlighted and students will be expected to visit the digital library to read or view the assigned materials.  In order to stress the importance of <em>The Vodou Archive</em> as a digital library, I will also require that students write essays about some of its components.','inherit','open','open','','1516-revision-4','','','2013-04-18 21:06:08','2013-04-18 21:06:08','',1516,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1516-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4033,1,'2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','The major challenges in writing and editing <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em> and <em>The Vodou Archive</em> are the profusion of variant spelling systems found in Haitian Creole until 1980. Most Haitian-Americans I work with at the University of Florida have limited exposure to written Haitian Creole prior to enrolling in my courses. After a year of intermediate Haitian Creole, it is still typical to misspell certain words. Given that the source texts they work from routinely employ spelling conventions that are no longer current, it is also common for undergraduate research assistants to reproduce the outdated spelling, especially in the cases of words that refer to concepts that are unfamiliar to them. The source text in (a) below, taken from scholar Milo Marcelin (1950), illustrates the base from which transcription (b) and translation (c) were produced:\n\n(a)\n<a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/figure_a.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3242\" title=\"figure_a\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/figure_a.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"252\" height=\"70\" /></a>\n<table width=\"70%\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"3\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>(b)</td>\n<td>(c)</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Danbala Wèdo se koulèv dlo!</td>\n<td>Danbala Wèdo is the water snake!</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Chèche Danbala, ki bò w a wè li?</td>\n<td>Look for Danbala, where will you see him?</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Papa Danbala se koulèv dlo,</td>\n<td>Papa Danbala is the water snake,</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>li plonje anba dlo!</td>\n<td>he dives under water!</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n\nIn texts like this one, it is common for research assistants to import uncorrected words like <em>Oueddo</em>, or to accidently retain the “c” or the unpronounced “e” in <em>coulève </em>instead of writing the official <em>koulèv</em>. This impacted my work, as it required me to extensively edit the students’ work and send it back for review and correction; while it was labor intensive, the feedback provided the students with the opportunity to master the transcription of Haitian Creole and the translation into English. Students will learn from their mistakes if they can see what they are and have the chance to correct them. It is also common for students to import erroneous grammatical analyses by writing “<em>wa</em>” following <em>oua</em> (in line two), a minor confusion in which separate words are conflated. The correct representation of <em>oua </em>is “<em>w a</em>” (“you will” or “will you,” when used interrogatively as in the above). As senior editor, I had the challenge of constantly encountering examples of outdated spellings that research assistants had unwittingly imported into their transcription.\n\nThe quality of the undergraduates’ work varied widely. The nuances of the mythology, the “cryptic tricksterism” of Vodou semantics, and the rich—and obscure—idioms, expressions, and conceptualizations of the Haitian Creole language meant that all the texts required years of refinement through the editorial process, which is based upon countless critical re-readings from various points of view.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn4\">[8]</a></sup> Thus, working with undergraduates is rewarding but requires mentoring and patience due to their limited experience.\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<div id=\"_ftn8\" class=\"footnote\">[8] Karen McCarthy Brown, “Plenty Confidence in Myself: The Initiation of a White Woman Scholar into Haitian Vodou,” <em>Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion</em> 3, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 67–76, 74.</div>\n</div>','Undergraduates in the Archives - Hebblethwaite 4','The major challenges in writing and editing <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em> and <em>The Vodou Archive</em> are the profusion of variant spelling systems found in Haitian Creole until 1980. Most Haitian-Americans I work with at the University of Florida have limited exposure to written Haitian Creole prior to enrolling in my courses.','inherit','open','open','','1513-revision-4','','','2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','',1513,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1513-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4034,1,'2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','The positive responses I received from publishers reinforced my sense that this project would be viable. In addition to this standard measure of academic success, the project itself was very successful as an intellectual and practical collaboration. The undergraduate collaborators worked vigorously and productively, helping to quickly advance the project. Vodou religion itself is a communal phenomenon. Likewise, I want the book and <em>The Vodou Archive</em> to express the unity of our collaboration as a means of ensuring accuracy through multiple voices and perspectives. Plus, as someone who was not raised within Vodou religion, I sensed that my scholarship on Haitian religion and its primary language, Haitian Creole, would benefit from extensive refereeing from a wide variety of informants: from <em>oungan </em>(priests), <em>manbo </em>(priestesses), <em>bòkò </em>(diviners), <em>ounsi</em> (initiates), scholars of all stripes, students in my classes, and the students directly involved in the project. As sharp intellectuals in their own right, these students participated in a triangular working methodology (my students, Vodou practitioners, and me) that helped ensure quality. They lent their talents to correcting, fashioning, and polishing the final product. The book and <em>The Vodou Archive</em> are the direct result of sharing texts and ideas through cooperative study, writing, and editing. As several students have native command of Haitian Creole, they were able to bring their deep knowledge and instincts of the language to the tasks I assigned them. Overall, it is the friendship and collegiality of working with people from all walks of life, and the experience of discovery, that has made, and continues to make, this project a great success for me. Writing and editing for academics is often a solitary activity. Working with undergraduate research assistants transformed the experience into a textual conversation about the nature and design of Vodou religion.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Hebblethwaite 3','The positive responses I received from publishers reinforced my sense that this project would be viable.  In addition to this standard measure of academic success, the project itself was very successful as an intellectual and practical collaboration. The undergraduate collaborators worked vigorously and productively, helping to quickly advance the project. Vodou religion itself is a communal phenomenon. ','inherit','open','open','','1510-revision-4','','','2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','',1510,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1510-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4035,1,'2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','There were many benefits to working with these undergraduates. The undergraduates chosen to work on this project were balanced bilinguals who demonstrated robust literacy in English and Haitian Creole, which I was able to assess since they had taken my intermediate Haitian Creole course. Florida has a large Haitian-American population that is second only to New York. In my position at the University of Florida, I instruct a significant number of Haitians and Haitian-Americans who have an advanced command of spoken and written Haitian Creole. Due to this strength, it is only natural to cultivate and tap into these talents for the benefit of their professional development and for the momentum of this project. As Haitian Creole is the third most spoken language in Florida after English and Spanish, developing advanced literacy in the language benefits employment prospects and it empowers individuals to seek out unique knowledge that exists only in Haitian Creole. Bilingual and biliterate candidates for employment in Florida’s healthcare industry, tourism industry, government, the law enforcement and judiciary system, transportation, and a host of other industries stand out next to their monolingual peers. Mastery of literacy in two languages is beneficial because knowledge can be acquired and shared via different mediums; individuals with these skills can facilitate communication, accuracy, and productivity.\n\nComplex and large projects like <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em> and <em>The Vodou Archive</em>—projects that overlap with specialized aspects of culture and language—are best done, I think, in collaboration with others. Since many of the texts are at first obscure, it is helpful to have several individuals bring unique knowledge and skills to the task of translation and interpretation. Each undergraduate editorial assistant has a unique mastery of Haitian Creole and English. Since material is parsed and analyzed by various editorial assistants, over time the collaboration allows for the emergence of an accurate collective transcription and translation. Given their fluency in Haitian Creole and English, the undergraduates provided outstanding transcriptions and translations of Vodou songs and interviews with Vodou practitioners that I could edit and improve upon for the book or <em>The Vodou Archive</em>.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Hebblethwaite 2','There were many benefits working with these undergraduates. The undergraduates selected to work for this project were balanced bilinguals who demonstrated robust literacy in English and Haitian Creole, which I was able to assess since they had taken my intermediate Haitian Creole course. ','inherit','open','open','','1507-revision-4','','','2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','',1507,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1507-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4036,1,'2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','<em>The Vodou Archive</em> is a collaborative partnership spearheaded by the University of Florida and Duke University that seeks to improve the understanding of a central Haitian and Haitian-American spiritual tradition by gathering the audiovisual and textual sources of Vodou communities, interpreting what we collect, expanding the holdings through a self-submission tool, and diffusing the knowledge via an open access digital library.  You can find the current prototype here &lt;<a href=\"http://www.dloc.com/vodou\">http://www.dloc.com/vodou</a>&gt;,  hosted within the existing <a href=\"http://dloc.com/\">Digital Library of the Caribbean</a> (dLOC). In addition to the twenty-seven international partners working with the Digital Library of the Caribbean, collaborators from the University of Notre Dame, the University of Miami, the Schrijversvakschool, Florida International University, the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, and City Lore, among others, will contribute elements to <em>The Vodou Archive</em>. This project belongs to a tradition of scholarly work stretching back to the early twentieth century that has sought to counter reductionist and racist visions of the religion through ethnography, analysis of culture and music, and an exploration of the role of Vodou in Haiti’s founding revolution. Such work has long turned to the central texts in Haitian Vodou: its Creole-language songs.\n\nBuilding on my book, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>,<sup><a href=\"#_ftn1\">[1]</a></sup> <em>The Vodou Archive</em> project makes these songs available in Haitian Creole and English, along with substantial interpretative annotations and essays to contextualize the collection. The edited and curated materials in <em>The Vodou Archive</em> are of major literary, historical, cultural, and religious significance. The vast Vodou corpus stands out because it preserves a wealth of African cultural, ethnological, and historical knowledge.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn2\">[2]</a></sup> The oral and textual corpora of songs are comprised of the authentic and living traditions of the Vodou religion. They are primarily sung in the context of Vodou worship in public and domestic ceremonies, and they constitute the sacred literature of the religion. Vodou songs, a constant in ceremonies, address the mythologies and characteristics of the religion: Bondye (God), the Marasa (the Divine Twins), the lwa (spirits), and the dantan (ancestors), as well as their relations with humans and nature. Vodou songs are time capsules that reveal the history and origins of the Haitian people in Africa, their journey to the Americas in the French slave trade, and their lives in the French colony. Due to their sacred nature, they arewell-preserved records of African and Haitian history and culture.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn3\">[3]</a></sup> Ceremonies and songs preserve African historical (i.e. <em>Bosou, Achade, Legba, Danbala, Simbi, Ayizan</em>), cultural (i.e. <em>lwa, ounsi, ason, oungan, manbo</em>) and geographical (i.e.<em> Rada, Savalou, Boumba</em>) terms in a creolized or blended religious and cultural system.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn4\">[4]</a></sup> Likewise, there are numerous Vodou ceremonies (rites) classified by the African <em>nanchon</em> (nations/communities) where they originate, such as Rada, Petwo, Ginen, Seneka, Ibo, Danwonmen, Nago, Kongo, Kita, etc.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn5\">[5]</a></sup>\n\nUndergraduates played, and will play, a key role in this archive.  They contributed first drafts of transcriptions and translations of Vodou songs and interviews with Vodou practitioners for the book, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>. The undergraduate students worked on transcribing and translating interviews that I collected from Vodou priests in Haiti and they also transcribed and translated rare pre-existing published materials.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn6\">[6]</a></sup>  The students, Joanne Bartley, Vanessa Brissault, Kat Warwick, Wilmide Vernet, and Musset Apollon, were either paid hourly through grant funding or they earned credit for an independent study. We worked from manuscripts that employ a range of Haitian Creole spelling systems. The official variety, the “IPN,” named after the <em>Institut Pédagogique National</em>, was adopted for the first time in 1980. Many of our manuscripts predate 1980 and thus transcription required heavy correction and consultation with lexicographical works.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn7\">[7]</a></sup> The students had been exposed to the official variety of Haitian Creole spelling in my intermediate Haitian Creole course. After establishing the Haitian Creole source text, the students produced the first draft of the English translation. Then I corrected the Haitian Creole and English drafts in various cycles as the materials moved towards the finished products, either the book or <em>The Vodou Archive</em>.  (See Figure 1, and for the related Vodou Archive digital library, Figures 2 &amp; 3.)<span class=\"caption\" style=\"width: 166px; margin-bottom: 20px;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig1.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2358\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig1\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig1-166x250.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 1\" width=\"166\" height=\"250\" /></a> Figure 1: The book cover of<em> Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>.</span>\n\n<span class=\"caption left\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; width: 266px; clear: none;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig2.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2359\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig2\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig2-333x208.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 2\" width=\"266\" height=\"166\" /></a> Figure 2: The homepage of the Vodou Archive.</span><span class=\"caption left\" style=\"margin-right: 10px; width: 266px; clear: none;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig3.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2360\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; clear: right;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig3\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig3-333x208.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 3\" width=\"266\" height=\"166\" /></a> Figure 3: This screen shot presents the view inside of the Vodou Archive with the filter menu for narrowing results on the left hand side of the screen.</span>\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<div id=\"_ftn1\" class=\"footnote\">[1] Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Joanne Bartley, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English </em> <em>= Chante vodou an kreyòl ayisyen ak angle</em> (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012).</div>\n<div id=\"_ftn2\" class=\"footnote\">[2] Max Beauvoir, <em>Le Grand Recueil Sacré ou Répertoire des Chansons du Vodou Haïtien </em>(Port-au-Prince: Edisyon Près Nasyonal d Ayiti, 2008).</div>\n<div id=\"_ftn3\" class=\"footnote\">[3] Claudine Michel, “Vodou in Haiti: Way of Life and Mode of Survival,” in <em>Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers, </em>ed. Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 27–37.<em></em></div>\n<div id=\"_ftn4\" class=\"footnote\">[4] See Roger Brand, <em>Cultes vodoun et textes oraux des Wéménou du sud Bénin </em>(Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000); Brand, <em>Ethnographie et vocabulaire religieux des cultes vodoun </em>(Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000); Marc Monsia, <em>Religions indigènes et savoir endogène au Bénin </em>(Cotonou, Benin: Les Éditions du Flamboyant, 2003); Gilbert Rouget, <em>La musique et la transe </em>(Paris: Gallimard, 1991 [1980]); and Gilbert Rouget, <em>Initiatique vôdoun, images du rituel: Chants et danses initiatiques pour le culte des vôdoun au Bénin </em>(Saint-Maur, France: Éditions Sépia, 2001), v.</div>\n<div id=\"_ftn5\" class=\"footnote\">[5] Max G. Beauvoir, <em>Lapriyè Ginen </em>(Port-au-Prince: Edisyon Près Nasyonal d Ayiti. 2008), 109-110.</div>\n<div id=\"_ftn6\" class=\"footnote\">[6] Milo Marcelin, <em>Mythologie Vodou (Rite Arada)</em>,<em> </em>2 vols. (Pétionville: Éditions Canapé Vert, 1950); Laura Boulton, “Laura Boulton’s Songs” (1947), in <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English = Chante vodou an kreyòl ayisyen ak angle</em>, eds. Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Joanne Bartley (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012), 127-145;  J.L., “J.L. Songs,” in <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>,<em> </em>147-184; Harold Courlander, unpublished manuscript (1939–1940), University of Michigan Special Collections Library; Milo Rigaud, <em>La tradition voudoo et le voudoo haïtien: Son temple, ses mystères, sa magie </em>(Paris: Éditions Niclaus, 1953).</div>\n<div id=\"_ftn7\" class=\"footnote\">[7] Albert Valdman, Iskra Iskrova, Jacques Pierre, and Nicolas André, <em>Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary</em> (Bloomington, IN: Creole Institute, 2007); Bryant Freeman and Jowel Laguerre, <em>Haitian-English Dictionary</em>, 5th ed. (Lawrence, KS: Institute of Haitian Studies, 2004).</div>\n</div>','Undergraduates in the Archives - Hebblethwaite 1','The Vodou Archive is a collaborative partnership spearheaded by the University of Florida and Duke University which seeks to improve the understanding of a central Haitian and Haitian-American spiritual tradition by gathering the audiovisual and textual sources of Vodou communities, interpreting what we collect, expanding the holdings through a self-submission tool, and diffusing the knowledge via an open access digital library.  ','inherit','open','open','','1504-revision-4','','','2013-04-18 21:06:09','2013-04-18 21:06:09','',1504,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1504-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4037,1,'2013-04-18 21:08:17','2013-04-18 21:08:17','In this issue, five contributors address how hands-on work with archives has been incorporated into undergraduate education.  They each answer a series of five questions to report on what they have done, what worked or not, and what value bringing archives into the classroom, or the classroom into the archive, has.  We invite you to read through the responses by author or by question.','Undergraduates in the Archives','','inherit','open','open','','1500-revision-5','','','2013-04-18 21:08:17','2013-04-18 21:08:17','',1500,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1500-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4038,1,'2013-04-21 17:20:49','2013-04-21 17:20:49','In this issue, five contributors address how hands-on work with archives has been incorporated into undergraduate education.  They each answer a series of five questions to report on what they have done, what worked or not, and what value bringing archives into the classroom, or the classroom into the archive, has.  We invite you to read through the responses by author or by question.','Undergraduates in the Archives','','inherit','open','open','','1500-revision-6','','','2013-04-21 17:20:49','2013-04-21 17:20:49','',1500,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/1500-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(4039,1,'2013-04-21 17:20:46','2013-04-21 17:20:46','I have only recently begun experimenting with using archival materials in the classroom, so I am still learning how to achieve the best results. Initially, I began by limiting student involvement to two or three weeks of the semester. I found that, practically, the students did much better when they worked in groups, in part because of the potential for some students to be more engaged than others, and in part because the students enjoyed being part of a team. Penn, of course, is home to the Wharton School of Business, and I often have a few Wharton students in class. These students helpfully pointed out that many Wharton classes assign students to a team in order to better prepare them for the private sector. This also allows the students to divide up the work according to each individual’s skill set. I have found the team-oriented approach—with all of the teams working together as one larger group devoted to producing a quality product for Native American clients—to work very well in the highly professionalized culture of Penn. However, this culture is double edged, for it also makes it difficult to attract pre-professional students to courses on Native American studies, which is not a program or a department at Penn.\n\nAs I became more comfortable and was able to prepare more quickly for the semester, I found that I could make more materials available to the students. I try to balance the students’ exposure to the originals by providing them with digital surrogates and by visiting the Penn Museum and the APS. This can be challenging because the APS is not set up for student visits; it is only because of my position as Director of Native American projects that I am able to arrange for a classroom to view original documents. The Penn Museum, on the other hand, actively encourages professors to bring their classes and provides access to the storage facilities. This planning paid off when, to my surprise, the students asked to have more time to work on their projects. Last semester, one student suggested that the entire semester should be devoted to creating the exhibits for the class project. When we talked about this together, the students expressed that they felt their work with archival materials would be more meaningful if they learned more about their historical and cultural background. The best students had done this research on their own, but I realized that the early part of the course could be structured to teach the students a great deal more about the cultural context of the archival materials, which would result in them understanding the materials better and doing a better job designing the exhibits. So this spring I am devoting an entire semester of a graduate seminar to researching archival materials and creating a digital exhibit based on student research. The APS recently acquired more than 500 hours of audio recordings related to Ojibwe culture in northern Canada (the acquisition was an outcome of the Pimachiowin Aki collaboration). The first five weeks of the class will be devoted to teaching the students the religious background necessary to understand the Ojibwe ceremonies being discussed; the ethics of working with religious materials in terms of what can or cannot be placed on the web; and basic archival skills so that the students can create a database and tags to make this new material more accessible to scholars and the Ojibwe communities where the material originated. All of the students’ work will be donated to those communities and the database will be housed at the APS.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Powell 5','I have only recently begun experimenting with using archival materials in the classroom, so I am still learning how to achieve the best results. Initially, I began by limiting student involvement to two or three weeks of the semester. I found that, practically, the students did much better when they worked in groups, in part because of the potential for some students to be more engaged than others, and in part because the students enjoyed being part of a team.','inherit','open','open','','1589-revision-9','','','2013-04-21 17:20:46','2013-04-21 17:20:46','',1589,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/%issue%/uncategorized/1589-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4040,1,'2013-04-18 21:07:19','2013-04-18 21:07:19','I give a great credit to <em>The Walt Whitman Archive</em> co-director Kenneth Price for taking a critical look at the costs associated with an endeavor such as his.\n<blockquote>[M]any people, myself included, have described our site as free, yet a considerable amount of resources continue to go into its making. I want to explore that conundrum. … When users visit a deep scholarly archive on the web they are experiencing the (mostly real) benefit of displaced costs. Instead of money being spent by the user at the point of contact, money is spent elsewhere along the line: by universities in the form of faculty time, equipment, graduate student assistance, and internal grants; by external funding agencies; and, in our case, curiously, by more than one publisher. … We might ask: Is what the Whitman archive has done a sustainable model for the production of other full-scale scholarly editions on the web? We have been fortunate with grants, publishers, libraries, and generous universities. But if it requires such a constellation of good fortune to produce an electronic scholarly edition, do we have a sound economic model in place? As the questions imply, I don\'t think we do.[ref]Kenneth M. Price, <a href=\"http://www.whitmanarchive.org/about/articles/anc.00004.html\">\"Dollars and Sense in Collaborative Digital Scholarship: The Example of the <em>Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive</em>,\"</a> <em>TWWA</em> (2001).[/ref]</blockquote>\nYet for all his candor, and the importance of that candor, he does not take the next (and even more difficult) step of analyzing the project’s benefits as well as its costs. Saying such an online archival endeavor is not sustainable is, in part, to say it does not (cannot, I will suggest) provide sufficient benefits to sustain continuing such costs. For me this is part of a larger question about how and why we allocate archival resources. I have no particular bone to pick with the <em>Whitman Archive</em>; I have raised similar concerns about the disproportionate staff and monetary resources devoted by bricks and mortar repositories to literary collections as a genre, congressional papers as a genre,[ref]Mark A. Greene, \"Appraisal of Congressional Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society: A Case Study,\" <em>Archival Issues</em> 19:1 (1994), 31-44.<em> </em>Republished in <em>An American Political Archives Reader,</em> Karen Dawley Paul , Glenn R Gray , and L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin eds. (Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2009), 181-96.[/ref] university records as a genre, state/county/local court records as a genre, and general store records as a genre[ref]Mark A. Greene, “From Village Smithy to Superior Vacuum Technology: Modern Small Business Records and the Collecting Repository,” <em>Archival Issues</em> 23:1 (1998), 41-58.[/ref]—all categories of records I believe are represented disproportionately in repositories and given disproportionate attention by archivists.\n\nAn argument that resource expenditure is disproportionate requires some comparison. As my then colleague at the Minnesota Historical Society wrote in 1998,\n<blockquote>while politics is an important component of Minnesota history, it is at least arguable that its importance is not so great as the resources that the Society has devoted to documenting it. Neither the stack space nor the staff time is sufficient to swallow Congressional collections whole and still be able appropriately to document business, recreation, family life, etc. for Minnesota. We had to ask: ‘Do we really need 116 feet of material to document Congressman Tom Hagedorn’s eight years in office when we keep 110 feet for nearly seventy years of the St. Paul Area United Way?’[ref]Todd J. Daniels-Howell, “Reappraisal of Congressional Records at the Minnesota Historical Society,” <em>Archival Issues </em>23:1 (1998), 36.[/ref]</blockquote>\nThis was hardly a precise comparison, to be sure, but it was an early attempt to ask archivists to consider the theretofore reflexive resource allocation required to document congressional service to the nth degree compared to both the opportunity costs and the relative benefit (to a repository’s users) of shifting resources to other acquisition, processing, and preservation goals. It is not that Hagedorn’s congressional tenure was value-<em>less</em> nor that the United Way’s records were objectively more valuable, only that we had never before considered the relative costs and benefits.\n\nSuch comparison is no easy matter, granted. It might be abstractly valid to ask whether it is a good allocation of resources to develop an exhaustive online archives for Walt Whitman when there are not such efforts underway for, say, Theodore Roosevelt,[ref]At least so far as I can discover, though I did not perform a truly exhaustive search.[/ref] but the fact is we have no mechanism to determine, in any way that is even vaguely acceptable on a wide scale, whether one historical figure is more “deserving” of such a site than another. And even if we did, we don’t have a mechanism for ensuring that the more deserving figure would automatically generate the structure necessary to solicit and manage the resources that might then be available. And if we succeeded in identifying such mechanisms there would still loom the matter of judging relative quantity and quality of use of the sites—use being, I believe, the “end of all archival effort.”[ref]Theodore R. Schellenberg, <em>The Management of Archives</em> (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 108. I have pursued the idea of the centrality of use to archival work most extensively in “’The Surest Proof’: The Use of Business Records and Implications for Appraisal,” <em>Archivaria</em> 45 (Spring 1998), 127-69 and later in Greene and Meissner, “More Product, Less Process.”[/ref]\n\nSo is this a purely rhetorical exercise? I don’t think so. As difficult as these questions are to answer with precision, they remain necessary questions and there are pieces of answers available once we start asking. My plea is that we do start asking, that we do start expecting to define quantitative and qualitative measure of the costs and benefits of such projects and, by extension, of our bricks and mortar archival endeavors as well. Not only do I think we owe it to our constituents and funders, I also believe it will increasingly be demanded by our administrators.','The Walt Whitman Archive – Greene 4','I give a great credit to The Walt Whitman Archive co-director Kenneth Price for taking a critical look at the costs associated with an endeavor such as his. \"[M]any people, myself included, have described our site as free, yet a considerable amount of resources continue to go into its making. I want to explore that conundrum.\"','inherit','open','open','','104-revision-4','','','2013-04-18 21:07:19','2013-04-18 21:07:19','',104,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/uncategorized/104-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4041,1,'2013-04-21 16:51:05','2013-04-21 16:51:05','test','Notes + Queries','','inherit','open','open','','3999-revision-4','','','2013-04-21 16:51:05','2013-04-21 16:51:05','',3999,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/3999-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4042,1,'2013-04-21 17:43:59','2013-04-21 17:43:59','test','Notes + Queries','','inherit','open','open','','3999-revision-5','','','2013-04-21 17:43:59','2013-04-21 17:43:59','',3999,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/3999-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4043,1,'2013-04-21 17:44:03','2013-04-21 17:44:03','test','Notes + Queries','','inherit','open','open','','3999-revision-6','','','2013-04-21 17:44:03','2013-04-21 17:44:03','',3999,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/3999-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(4044,1,'2013-04-21 17:45:05','2013-04-21 17:45:05','test','Notes + Queries','','inherit','open','open','','3999-revision-7','','','2013-04-21 17:45:05','2013-04-21 17:45:05','',3999,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/3999-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(4045,1,'2013-05-26 17:56:17','2013-05-26 17:56:17','test','Notes + Queries','','inherit','open','open','','3999-autosave','','','2013-05-26 17:56:17','2013-05-26 17:56:17','',3999,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/3999-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4046,1,'2013-04-21 16:48:30','2013-04-21 16:48:30','The primal scene of archival research takes place in a dreary reading room. A researcher sits at her table, inert. An archivist enters, pushing a cart that bears a dozen dusty gray boxes. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'1\'] <iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5ykY6moIaDE?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\"></iframe> A staged archival encounter.[/note] The archivist unhinges a box, removes a numbered file folder and, placing it at the researcher’s elbow, steps back. The researcher stirs, then sits upright with a mechanical jolt. She turns sharply in the direction of the folder, flips it open and cocks her head towards the flimsy leaves inside; now she is reading. (Zoom in on the eyes as they click into focus.) Now she is reading, and now she truly comes alive; she bends towards the papers, taps her forehead in thought. A sheaf of blank paper and a pencil appear on her table, and she begins taking notes. Her fingers fly—and soon, so do the pages she is writing upon. Caught up in eddies of excitement, they swoop to the ceiling and around the room and down to the floor, where they fall together into perfect piles. Bindings sprout from the outer strata; the pages sew themselves into bright, tight, hard-cover books. These the archivist gathers up and places on the shelves that line the room, next to other books and gray boxes.\r\n\r\nI may have it backwards: in other versions of the fantasy, it is the archive that is first animated by the presence of the researcher, a Dr. Coppelius who waves a pencil and sets the dusty boxes to dancing. But either way, the archival imaginary posits a symbiotic relationship between researcher and source, a photogenic pas de deux that leads to a finished scholarly product. This work, in turn, enters the archive for the next generation of researchers; it might even be taken apart again so that its secret ingredients (notes, drafts, letters) can themselves be served up in a series of boxes. Such a strangely private form of publication it creates, the coupling of researcher and source.\r\n\r\nWhat Freudian trauma results from witnessing this sight? Only the harm that myth inflicts. This primal scene is a fiction, a dream of perfect union between researcher and source that ignores, first of all, the full cast of characters. What about the archivist, who is rendered invisible? What about all those within and without the archive, upon whose labor—acquiring, preserving, organizing, reading, cataloging, describing, interpreting, analyzing, debating, teaching, writing, editing, digitizing, referencing and publishing—the current project depends? More a barn dance than a pas de deux: an archival encounter is an enactment of social authorship long before the researcher enters the room. [note number=\'1\']See Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) on the idea of social authorship, which could be described as “the dialectic between the historically located individual author and the historically developed institutions of literary production” that help create a work, eg, printers, publishers, editors and readers (81).[/note]\r\n\r\nBut even a barn dance is much too mannered a metaphor. The sketch above misleads us more generally about the experience on the ground. Doing time in an archive is often tedious, uncomfortable and bewildering. For librarians, there is the struggle to promote and simultaneously protect what you have; the difficulty of fitting unruly materials into arrangements and workflows; and worries about space and time—where to put it all, how to address your backlog. For researchers, there is the struggle to locate the archives you need and what matters to you inside them; the uncertainty created by unruly data; and worries about time and space— how to access what you need during your research trip, how to record and organize the information you gather. At both ends, the archival encounter is counter-cinematic and erratic, days of monotonous sifting and dead-ends punctuated by one or two, or maybe zero, hidden moments of vivid, peculiar joy.\r\n\r\nSo archival research does not fulfill its ideal outline. So what? Who cares? Why dredge up the fantasy? Because the fantasy continues to structure our archival encounters—what we expect and undertake in the reading room, what we allow it to mean. Twenty years ago, Alice Kaplan observed that “conventional academic discourse requires that when you write up the results of your archival work, you tell a story about what you found, but not about how you found it. The less the seams of your findings show, the better your discoveries lend themselves to use by others… tell[ing] these stories breaks their spell and violates the spirit of the archives.” [note number=\'2\']Alice Yaeger Kaplan, “Working in the Archives,” Yale French Studies 77 (1990): 103-116; 103, 107.[/note] With a few word changes, the same could be said about what counts as professional archivist discourse: the impersonal, neutral genre of the finding aid, for example, should say what is in a collection, but should not discuss what is confusing or missing in it, or the problems it posed in processing. [note number=\'3\']See, for example, James M. O’Toole and Richard J. Cox, Understanding Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006).[/note] Despite the growing recognition that this sequestration is never completely possible—that the material conditions and social relations of the archive shape the work we do in it—that work continues to be represented in professional and scholarly publications as if it is. Despite the recent call to move to the fore “the backstage of the archives—how they are constructed, policed, experienced, and manipulated” in order to support historiography “not merely [as] a project of fact-retrieval” but as “a set of complex processes of selection, interpretation, and even creative invention,” the “backstage” stays in the background. [note number=\'4\']Antoinette Burton, “Introduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories,” Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 7-8.[/note] Antoinette Burton may be correct that “many if not most historians operate under the assumption that history is a highly interpretive act,” but this belief is not yet reflected in the archival encounter: the ways that researchers (not just historians) and librarians report their experiences with primary sources; the ways that librarians and researchers work together; the ways librarians and researchers regard the involvement of “non specialists.” [note number=\'5\']Burton, 8. Burton notes that “whether historians concede or fully countenance the impact of such contingencies on their work is another question. They rarely speak of them, and even more rarely do they do so in print” (8). Her books recuperates some of those archive stories but this effort, I’ll suggest below, is hampered by other kinds of obligations.[/note] While the advent of digitization and electronic resource sharing has revolutionized the research landscape, making primary sources public in unprecedented ways, there remains in the archive a habitus of secret knowledge—the “spell” that Kaplan is loathe to break. This is not necessarily intentional. It is rather the effect of layering recent shifts in technology, theory and professional definition onto older foundations: petrified conditions, relations, expectations and systems that continue to operate in part through the enduring power of fantasies about research. What we have in the archive is a stratified groundwork that still governs our archival encounters.\r\n\r\nBut, you will object, the archive has already changed. Now we have the “archival turn”—the scholarly interest in the archive not just as a source of evidence but as an epistemological mode. Surely, this attention to the constructedness of the archive has led to a revealing reconsideration of what actually goes on inside an archive; surely, as a result, those archaic fantasies have diminished. Have they? In what follows, I begin by unearthing one stratum of the archival turn, the decade of the 1990s, as represented by three texts: Kaplan’s essay mentioned above, “Working in the Archives” (1990) [note type=\'figure\' number=\'2\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-369\" title=\"fig 2 kaplan\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Photocopy of Alice Yaeger Kaplan’s “Working in the Archives.”[/note]; Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1994/95) [note type=\'figure\' number=\'3\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-372\" title=\"fig 3 Derrida\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.[/note]; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001). [note type=\'figure\' number=\'4\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-373\" title=\"fig 4 steedman\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust.[/note] [note number=\'6\']Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).[/note] A cross-examination of these three texts reveals a pattern of interests, a set of efforts to defy customary practices—but only, it turns out, “in theory.” While certain practices are challenged in these texts, they leave mostly intact the older strata of archival research fantasies and conventions. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman do not dislodge the forces that organize the actual archival encounter.\r\n\r\nHow does this happen? Why is practice so stubborn? We need another take on archival practice: not practice in theory, but practice in action; not the 1990s, but now; not in terms of textual patterns, but in terms that suit the subject: the terms of the archival encounter itself, and the eccentric, anachronistic and even monotonous experience it generates. My second look at practice will take the form of a series of vignettes about a real-life archive, the George Peabody Library in Baltimore. While this narrative structure may seem to recreate the division of labor between theory and practice, my hope is that—by giving practice the last word—we’ll be in a better position to synthesize the two.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>I. “The library doubles as a detective’s office.” [note number=\'7\']Kaplan, 114.[/note]</strong>\r\n\r\nThe archival turn could be dated to the founding of “scientific” history in the mid-nineteenth century, or to the development a century later of the quantitative methods of the Annales School, or to other evidence-based movements in the history of history, but what is generally meant by this phrase corresponds with the formation of cultural studies and the use of the archive as a conceptual category. That is, the archival turn has to do with the notion of the “figuration” of the archive, a parallel decline in its empirical authority and a related expansion of its relevance within domains that are not exclusively historiographic, like art, literary criticism, textual studies, media studies and information studies. [note number=\'8\']See the use of the term in, for example, Carolyn Hamilton et al, eds., Refiguring the Archive (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), Cheryl Simon, ed., Following the Archival Turn: Photography, the Museum, and the Archive, special issue of Visual Resources: A Journal of Documentation 18.2 (June 2002), and Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). This turn is partially construed as a “move from archive-as-source to archive-as-subject,” but also by the earlier metaphorical interest in “the archive” that goes back to the 1980s (Stoler, 44-45) and by Foucauldian descriptions of archives as “‘monuments to particular configurations of power” (Hamilton, qtd. in Burton, 6).[/note] But it is not irrelevant that a devotion to archival methods precedes by many decades contemporary theories of the archive; if the archival turn lacks a precise origin, this (we will see) is completely in keeping with its own preoccupations.\r\n\r\nKaplan therefore represents in some ways an arbitrary beginning for this cross-examination—clearly the archive as a conceptual category predates 1990—but her article does initiate something new: the recognition that there is something called an “archive story” that must remain hidden in order for the official “results” to function authoritatively. In admitting this bit of professional legerdemain, and in telling her own archive story in a prestigious scholarly journal, Kaplan not only commits the violation she prohibits but also contradicts it. Through its publication, Kaplan’s own archive story is elevated to the status of “results”—a kind of research that shadows conventional academic discourse. Indeed, Kaplan notes, such “fables” of research “can be analyzed like a text,” a “mixed up genre” that combines the “redemptive detective fiction” with the epic and the dime novel. [note number=\'9\']Kaplan, 106, 107.[/note]\r\n\r\nKaplan’s archive story thus marks a distinctive moment in the archival turn—one which gained its most prominent authorization in 1994, with a paper that Jacques Derrida delivered (in English) to a conference sponsored by the Freud Museum, the Courtauld Institute and the Société International d’Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychoanalyse. Called initially “The Concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression,” the lecture was revised and published in 1995 as Mal d’archive: une impression freudienne in French; the published English version echoed the French publication with its 1995 title Archive Fever. As Carolyn Steedman points out in Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, however, this work that has been assigned a seminal status in archival studies “for the main part… is not about archives at all, but is rather a sustained contemplation of a work of history, of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (1991),” itself a sustained contemplation of Moses and Monotheism—which (according to Steedman) Yerushalmi examines through Freud’s description of the work as a “‘historical novel,’ or a kind of historical story,” undertaken “in order to understand the period of baroque anti-semitism through which he was living.” [note number=\'10\']Steedman, 3.[/note]\r\n\r\nDizzy yet? Let’s undertake a more careful reading of this splatter pattern of intra-references—or, to stick with the archaeological metaphor, let’s call them groups of potsherds buried in the 1990s layer of the “archival turn.” Digging down to reassemble them reveals a set of interests with special implications for archival practice.\r\n\r\nThe most prominent group of sherds to note are the fragments of disciplinarity: the inter-, multi- or perhaps simply anti-disciplinarity of the texts, authors and audiences caught up in these three archival addresses. Kaplan, an American scholar of French literature, calls the post-theory exchange between literature and history a “cross-pollination of desire between historians and literary critics” undertaken “with the curiosity and energetic passion of collectors.” [note number=\'11\']Kaplan, 107-108.[/note] Steedman, a British historian, performs this cross-pollinating process without comment: her epigraph to Dust is from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, one chapter treats George Eliot’s Middlemarch in depth… in fact, almost every chapter depends on a literary text. [note number=\'12\']Another chapter invokes Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 novel Mary Barton, a third is anchored by W. H. Auden’s poem “Homage to Clio,” and a fourth finds its most eloquent examples in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.[/note] Derrida, a French philosopher, produced a work that has been exceptionally mobile across disciplines, forms, languages and professional domains. He gave his initial talk to an audience drawing on three different kinds of institutions; Mal d’Archive was published in book form in both French and English, but also made an intermediate appearance as an essay in the journal diacritics. All of these texts, it seems, respond to the provocations of the archive—to the materials and circumstances of discovery—rather than to the disciplinary distinctions that arguably divide the archive from itself.\r\n\r\nArchive Fever has become a founding document even though, as Steedman notes in the very beginning of her book, many in Derrida’s audience “knew the ‘archival turn’ to be [already] well underway” at the time of his talk. [note number=\'13\']Steedman, 2.[/note] As it happens—and this is the second group of sherds I see—these three essays have in common an investment in or a problem with origins, especially with the failure of origins. Derrida, for example, defines archive fever as a kind of Freudian death drive—a drive to fix and preserve which at the same time “works to destroy the archive: on the condition of effacing but also with a view to effacing its own ‘proper’ traces… [it] is above all anarchivic, one could say, or archiviolithic… the archive always works, and a priori, against itself.” [note number=\'14\']Derrida, 14. [/note] If the archival impulse is driven to destroy its own work, then the question of origins ultimately point to the larger question of disorder. [note number=\'15\']The disorder of origins makes frequent appearances in the essay but one example will make the point—in the “Preamble” where he recounts how he titled the talk that he had not yet written and was to give at the Freud Museum. The “Preamble” starts with his reflections on the word “impression,” which has several simultaneous registers of meaning for him. One of these is the “scriptural or typographic” register: that of the graphic impression that marks a substrate. In English, “impression” is phonetically related to “repression” and “suppression,” key words in the Freudian vocabulary, translated respectively from the German Verdrängung and Unterdrückung. English, that is, retains the rhyming relationship of the two German terms, and “impression” in this company comes to have a vaguely Freudian meaning as well. But in French, Verdrängung is “refoulement,” which means something more like expulsion, a driving away. The Freudian sense of the French word “répression” has been reserved for Unterdrückung. So English “repression” defines a phenomenon that must be distinguished from the French “répression.” These translational shifts “directly concern the structures of archivization,” Derrida says, “because they touch on the topic differences and thus on the location of the substrates of traces\" (Derrida, 23). In other words, how do you classify concepts whose meanings shift across languages? Where do you store them in a disciplinary grammar—or in an archive? How do these asymmetrical linguistic structures shape the establishment and extension of a new science? For Derrida, the difference between “repression” and “répression” is “enough to disrupt the tranquil landscape of all historical knowledge, of all historiography, and even of all self-consistent ‘scholarship’” (Derrida, 23).[/note]\r\n\r\nOrigin failure appears both as deliberate performance and as unintentional oversight in these essays. Derrida stages his own inability to get past “go”; with an introductory section, and subsequent sections sub-titled “Exergue,” “Preamble,” “Foreword,” his essay functions, Steedman notes, like a “primer offering instruction in the principle of deferral.” [note number=\'16\']A short notice called “Priere d’inserer,” published only in the French book version, carried the bulk of an argument for which there was no room in the lecture. Steedman, 7.[/note] For all her insight into Derrida’s titling adventures, however, Steedman’s title is marked by its own origin aporia. While her first chapter is devoted to Archive Fever—a “let’s begin at the beginning” homage to the seminal text—her book’s title, Dust, seems more indebted to the last sentence of Kaplan’s essay, published five years before Derrida’s: “Usually there is no mother lode, no original manuscript to be retrieved—the gold is all in the dust.” [note number=\'17\']Kaplan, 116.[/note] Kaplan, however, is never mentioned. [note number=\'18\']Kaplan also begins her essay with a brief consideration of the “arche,” the Greek and Latin term for the public records office, which is a major starting point for Derrida. Is he borrowing from her, or is she borrowing from him, given that this sort of etymological investigation was an established signature of Deconstruction?[/note]\r\n\r\nKaplan, for her part, unravels her own archive story. She gives us a kind of “whodunit”—her search for the ephemeral sources of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s anti-semitic pamphlet Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937). She uses this account to exemplify her effort to “move through the archival process and recover some of the stories that get deleted in the final scholarly form.” [note number=\'19\']Kaplan, 104. For this reason, perhaps, Kaplan never reveals what she ultimately discovers in her successful search for Celine’s sources. In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether her pre-emptive and truncated treatment of her archive story is deliberate or not. Is this treatment meant to indirectly support her official claim about “results”? Or does the presence of the archive story suggest that telling it is an impulse she can’t quite control? Thanks, Lauren Coats, for helping tease this problem out.[/note] These beginnings are preemptively struck out, however, by what seems to be her main claim: “the passion of the archives must finally be used to eradicate all personal stories in the interests of the dry archival report, fit for a public.” [note number=\'20\']Kaplan, 103.[/note] Only in the “para-text”—a preface, for example—can the archive story appear without “interrupt[ing] or complicat[ing] the narrative so much that no results could ever be understood or perceived.” [note number=\'21\']Kaplan, 104.[/note] Despite this unequivocal assertion, the personal “whodunit” prevails in her essay, especially in the final section set in the Centre du documentation juive contemporain (CDJC). [note type=\'figure\' number=\'5\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-5-cdjc-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-423\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-423\" title=\"fig 5 cdjc\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-5-cdjc1-333x250.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Website for the Centre de documentation juive contemporain.[/note] It is this library, where Kaplan solves the mystery of Céline’s sources, that “doubles as a detective’s office.”\r\n\r\nWhile Kaplan’s research mystery resolves neatly, the truth about archives is that they are full of gaps, mistakes and excesses: in the words of one of the CDJC librarians, “‘ici on trouve tout’—there’s some of everything here”—but not, one could add, all of anything. [note number=\'22\']Kaplan, 115.[/note] Kaplan’s essay ends by nullifying both her detective story success and her “dry archival report,” by recognizing the disorder on which both of these narratives are unsteadily perched: “The archive is constituted by these errors, these pieces out of place, which are then reintegrated into a story of some kind.” [note number=\'23\']Kaplan, 115.[/note] “A story of some kind”? So much for “results.”\r\n\r\nKaplan sets us up to perceive one final potsherd pattern common to these three essays. If origin-less disorder is the order of the archive, it is a disorder that is generated out of human loss—a disorder that joins the body and the material world. The archive is always predicated on historical violence of some sort, whatever is censored, erased, excluded, trumped up, used up, misplaced, conquered, killed. Moreover, the archival categories that mark both the visible victories and hidden defeats do not stay within their walls; the archive is both a repository of existing schemas and a means of perpetuating them in the world beyond. While we might usually think of this disciplinary activity as a pact between the archive and its political authors, Steedman makes it clear that the dilemmas of order shape the archival body in many ways. For example, she takes literally the provocation of Derrida’s title Archive Fever to investigate the illness that researchers contract on the penultimate day of their trip to the archive: prompted by the anxiety of the task that remains unfinished, they end their research with night-sweats and head-aches. But what seems like a strangely specific malady is transformed by Steedman into a far-reaching social symptom: by relating the researcher’s “archive fever” to the terrible diseases suffered by tanners, skinners and other workers in the trades associated with paper and leather, Steedman expands our sense of who is in the archive—the bodies whose specialized labors populate our libraries with books, the many kinds of expertise the archive consumes.\r\n\r\nFor Derrida, the relation between the material archive and its human architects focuses on one kind of “graphic mark,” a particular “private inscription”: circumcision as the archival signature that is also the signature of patrimoine, with Freud’s relationship to his father as his main example. [note number=\'24\']Derrida, 19.[/note] It is perhaps not a coincidence that the body in question in both Kaplan’s and Derrida’s archive is Jewish, for that is a body that has come to symbolize the destructive power of classificatory regimes. Despite her contention that the private passions motivating research must be kept secret, Kaplan is fascinated by the “missing person stories” at the CDJC: by the “quantity of people who are there for personal reasons,” the survivors of occupation or deportation or camps, or their descendants, quietly looking up their lost ones or noisily dropping off their memoirs. [note number=\'25\']Kaplan, 113.[/note] This disorganized crowd of dead and living bodies tries to meet up with an equally disorganized crowd of materials—individual letters, trial transcripts, pamphlets, newspapers, first-person accounts, books, photographs, lists. The monumental task of match-making, the librarians’ work, is never complete. More papers are always generated or declassified or discovered, different human questions and needs emerge. The tidy choreography of the research fantasy, where the detective always finds her man, is not so much in evidence; what we have instead is corpora in excess of existing categories.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\nKaplan, Derrida and Steedman open up the archival body. They show us how paper meets the press of flesh; they make us feel just how intimate it is. [note number=\'26\']This interest in the corporeal dimensions and effects of order, its human and non-human components, has in common with their other gestures—an experimental attitude towards conventional disciplinarity and attention to the priority of disorder—the circumstances of the academic humanities in the 1990s. Since the archival turn came out of the ascent of cultural studies and allied intrigues in the 1970s and ‘80s, the circles in the Venn diagram of these ventures will necessarily overlap. We could also say that the archive took off when it did precisely because it made a clever new container for these preoccupations, thick in the humanities atmosphere at the time, where they were distilled and united. [/note] But for all their revelations about the limits of discipline and the multiplicities of disorder in the archive, these texts do not disclose the specific methods of engagement that led to their existence. While Kaplan offers up her own archival victory and outlines several other such stories, she still insists on their marginalization. [note number=\'27\']“Were the story of how you got the story really to be told inside the book, it would interrupt or complicate the narrative so much that no results could be understood or even perceived. Every story of success in the archives is emotionally charged, for only the most extreme emotions can drive people to the drudgery, to the discomfort, of sitting and sifting through dog-eared documents, manuscripts, microfilms. To reveal those emotions would not only gum up the narrative, it would threaten its credibility, by showing on what thin strands of coincidence, accident, or on what unfair forms of friendship, ownership, geographical proximity, the discoveries were based” (Kaplan, 104).[/note] If these texts are not concerned with actual practices in the archive or changes in its methodologies, what do they tell us?\r\n\r\nFirst, they suggest one reason for the perpetuation of myths about the archive. While Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are eager to show how archival materials do not conform to disciplinary distinctions—an enthusiasm related to other disruptive tendencies in late twentieth-century humanist scholarship –they seem less cognizant of a related phenomenon: the archive does not obey strict professional divisions, either. In Kaplan’s library-as-detective’s-office metaphor, the scholar is the detective, but does the “Eureka” moment belong only to the scholar who pieces together a narrative? What about the people who prepared those pieces? The archivist is still missing in action. Likewise, these essays do not dwell on missing boxes, illegible papers, neglected citations. There are no descriptions of archival slogging, no admissions that some materials failed to be relevant. And of course, there are no prescriptions for a different order. It is not the main aim of Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman to effect an evolution of practice; archival turnistas are not interested in disorder in order to re-order. But it is worth remembering that it is not in their professional interest as scholars to make their practices more transparent.\r\n\r\nSecondly, along the same lines, these texts inform us of the duplicity of speculative practices that reveal but cannot live out the instability of their archival mandates. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are put into the position of saying, “Yes, the archive is biased, idiosyncratic and treacherous—but the observations I draw from it are flawless.” [note number=\'28\']Derrida, unlike Kaplan and Steedman, makes no claims to work inside an actual archive, unless we consider Yerushalmi’s book as a kind of archive. But the fact that the essay was written self-consciously for presentation at the Freud Museum suggests that it was made out of an archive indirectly—in its construction, if not in its contents. [/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, these texts suggest why archival studies that attempt to be explicit about the messy nature of the archive have become instead “archive studies.” In more recent works like Refiguring the Archive (2002), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History (2005) and Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009), the archive appears as a subject in its own right. Although the archival scenarios that are put into play in each of these books incorporate different disciplines—art, history, anthropology, literature, post-colonial studies—they have essentially created a new discipline. “Archive studies” is something we might, in the taxonomy of disciplines, see as the love-child of cultural studies, history and archival methodology. Moreover, this new discipline has in common with other humanities disciplines a complete blindness about its professional investments; it does not register much awareness of the professional investments of librarians, archivists, curators and “non-specialists,” or invite insights from those perspectives. Perhaps this is inevitably what happens when academics must give legitimacy to something new, which in turn reflects the pressures of scholarly communication: a topic must be delineated in conventional terms in order to merit publication. [note number=\'29\']Perhaps this is also the moment to ask why we—I—have been using the term “archive” all along, with its statist resonances, rather than the term “collection,” which has institutional but also personal resonances. Does “archive” bring us closer to recognizably “serious scholarship”?[/note] But it is also true that in these more recent books, which openly investigate the archive’s power-politics, the disorderly drift of the archive and its hybrid corporeality have mostly been bent towards a particular narrative about the archive as an agent of history rather than as a set of ongoing practices. It is as if the historical archive has been assembled in ways that reflect and reiterate power relations, but the contemporary archive has not; it is as if the researcher’s own research travails remain a transparent layer over the body of work that it constructs. [note number=\'30\']Of course, this is precisely what Derrida meant about the “death drive” of the archival impulse. Archive Stories is something of an exception; researchers speak openly here about themselves as researchers. It is interesting, however, that this book—like Steedman’s—doesn’t cite Kaplan’s essay as a precursor text despite the clear titular link.[/note]\r\n\r\nPerhaps it would also be fair to note that, if archival studies are now being formulated as an interdisciplinary discipline called “archive studies,” this might be just another stage in the turn. It might be that what comes next reconfigures the premise of disciplinarity and the promise of disorder, with a different approach to the human/non-human interactions that the archive documents and realizes: a more diffuse and multi-vocal set of practices in place of a new field. One way to imagine this approach would be to fully embrace Kaplan’s idea of the archive story as an account of what one hoped for, looked for and found, what one did and did not do, in the archive—an account loosed from the quarantine she advocates. Some very basic genre precedents for the archive story do exist; the bibliographic essay and the methodology statement, for example, have played an important role in many disciplines in the past and still do in some. Instead of a para-textual nod towards that archive story (in Kaplan’s sense), why not create a parallel text written collaboratively by the researcher(s) and the librarian(s), or by one person acting in both professional capacities, that runs alongside the official “results”? Or in a set of expanded notes that address not just the “what” and “where” but the “how” and “why” of sources, which are lifted from their small-type, bottom-of-page basement up into the light? Or—to add yet another layer—parallel texts that also offer room for exchange with other researchers, archivists and even interested “non specialists,” like collectors, bibliophiles and fans?\r\n\r\nIf it is hasn’t been clear already that I have scrupulously avoided so far the other kind of archive, the digital archive, it will be now. What I am imagining would be far too complicated to produce or consult in print, but would not be at all difficult to organize as a digital object—as an archive in its own right. By avoiding the digital archive up to this point, I have also finessed the fact that our current archival research methods are completely reliant on the digital archive, along with the development of online research tools and electronic instruments of data discovery and organization. Those conditions probably bear the most responsibility for making the archive visible as something that warranted a “turn” in the first place. Even Derrida refers in each version of Archive Fever to the computer on which he is currently composing, predicting that email will not only totally transform the archive as he knows it, but will make his own essay obsolete.\r\n\r\nIn short, we already have in place both the theory and the media that will make it possible to enact a radical new archival practice. We have in place what we need to integrate the archive story into the archive itself, while making it visible as a new form of “results.”\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>II. The library doubles as a librarian’s office.</strong>\r\n\r\nI could end here, with a triumphant firing of the starter pistol and a rousing cheer. But that would be a bit disingenuous, given that the starter pistol for both the archival turn and the academic use of the internet actually went off decades ago. So the question remains, what stands in the way of the practical enactment of the archival turn’s speculative insights? I’d like to engage this question by following Kaplan’s example (but not her main claim): through some archive story-telling about the George Peabody Library. These three vignettes, identified as “typical” through conversations with my colleague Paul Espinosa, illustrate the intractable formations that present-day archival encounters come up against.\r\n\r\n<strong>1. The Perils of Description.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A group of Russian speakers visits the Peabody Library. The dozen men and women sit down around the screen that Paul has set up. He narrates a brief slide-show about the Peabody’s history, then leads them to a table where a dozen books from the collection have been laid out in cradles. He tells them about each book: what it is, why it is interesting. Each phrase of his presentation is painstakingly translated by the group’s leader into Russian.</blockquote>\r\nWhen academic and community groups visit the Peabody, my colleagues and I draw upon a standard tour-guide’s repertoire to describe it. We explain that George Peabody was a tradesman cum financier cum philanthropist who decided in 1857 that Baltimore needed a cultural institution to support the arts and learning. We talk about the evolution of the Peabody Institute, the four-part athenaeum that resulted, with its art gallery, lecture series, conservatory and free, public, non-circulating library. We discuss the model of philanthropy that George Peabody initiated and its wide-ranging influence. We point out the signal features of the awe-inspiring architecture of the current library, built to accommodate a rapidly growing collection in 1878. But when it comes to the library itself, as a collection, it is hard to know what to say. How to accurately translate the library’s holdings into a succinct and memorable statement that conveys an appropriate level of detail to different audiences? While it poses specific challenges, the Peabody also exemplifies more general problems of collection description.\r\n\r\nWe do not lack evidence for the evolving contents of the Peabody. We have the two-volume printed list of “desiderata” drawn up by the Peabody’s first librarian, John G. Morris. [note number=\'31\']Alphabetical Catalogue of Books to be Purchased for the Library of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Vols. 1 and 2 (Baltimore: John D. Toy, 1861, 1863).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'6\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-6-alpha-index-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-395\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-395\" title=\"fig 6 alpha index\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-6-alpha-index1-336x484.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"484\" /></a>Alphabetical index from Alphabetical Catalouge (“desiderata”).[/note] We have the collections register for several decades’-worth of acquisitions, recording bibliographic information and accession numbers that can still be found on the inside front end papers of many of the books in the collection. We have the librarians’ annual reports to the library trustees. [note number=\'32\']The Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore: The Founder’s Letters and the Papers Relating to its Dedication and History, Up to the 1st January, 1868 (Baltimore: William K. Boyle, 1868); and subsequent Annual Reports, 1869, etc.[/note] We have the library’s first printed catalogue, an unsurpassed achievement when first published in 1883, which listed 100,000 volumes by author and title. [note number=\'33\']Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Vols. 1-5 (Baltimore: Isaac Friedenwald, 1883; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, [1961?]; also on googlebooks), and Second Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Including the Additions Made Since 1882, Vols. 1-8 (Baltimore: Deutsch Lithographic and Printing, 1896; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, 1961).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'7\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-7-print-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-396\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-396\" title=\"fig 7 print cat\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-7-print-cat-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Reprinted volumes of the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute (1883).[/note] We have the cards from the Dewey decimal system card catalogue, which replaced the printed catalogue in the 1910s. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'8\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-8-card-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-397\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-397\" title=\"fig 8 card cat\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-8-card-cat.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>One of two card catalogues in the Peabody.[/note] Now, of course, the library’s collections are represented in an online catalogue that integrates them with other collections in the Hopkins library system.\r\n\r\nThese markers of the collection, however, fail to satisfy some contemporary research queries for reasons that are both practical and philosophical. The transfer of the printed index, organized by author, to the Dewey decimal system, organized by topic, represented a major epistemological shift that facilitated browsing by subject category. But of course, those categories are embedded in historically-bound notions about the subjects and structures of knowledge: Dewey was invented in the 1870s, and the 22 revisions it has undergone since then cannot overcome its essential organizational distortions. For example, the literature range—the 800s—offers only 10% of its categorical space to literatures in languages other than English, Germanic and Romance languages, Greek and Latin.\r\n\r\nIn the case of the Peabody, the Dewey arrangements overlay even older systems of knowledge hierarchy. Should we continue to offer, for example, a description of the Peabody’s “voyages and travels” books? This category represents a Renaissance schematic that was still in service in the mid-nineteenth century; while actual “voyages and travels” were extended by colonial ventures, the category was eventually disbanded. Dewey combined it with geography to make a sub-category of “history.” In keeping active the old-fashioned phrase “voyages and travels,” we are participating in a centuries-long project of euphemism about the material aims and actual activities of colonialism; we are privileging an early phase of the Peabody’s evolution over later phases; we may even be confusing modern researchers. And yet, as one of the topics in Morris’s “desiderata,” a considerable portion of the Peabody’s collection was acquired with the aim of fleshing out that descriptor. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'9\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-9-index-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-398\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-398\" title=\"fig 9 index detail\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-9-index-detail-336x274.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"274\" /></a>Detail of subject index from Alphabetical Catalouge No. 2 (“desiderata”).[/note]\r\n\r\nYet another classificatory dilemma is expressed by George Peabody’s original statement of the library’s purpose: that it “be furnished in every department of knowledge, with the most approved literature… It should consist on the best works on every subject… to satisfy the researches of students who may be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge not ordinarily attainable in the private libraries of the country.” [note number=\'34\']“Letters from George Peabody, Esq.: Baltimore, February 12th, 1857,” in Founder’s Letters, 7.[/note] The Peabody was founded as a cultural institution for the people of Baltimore, but from the first, this democratic ambition was in conflict with the intellectual aspirations of the first librarians and their desire to facilitate civic “self-improvement.” Morris (a doctor of divinity), his successor Nathaniel Holmes Morison (a schoolmaster and poet), and Morison’s assistant and successor Philip Uhler (who had trained as an entomologist) were all devoted to the nineteenth-century idea of the scholar-librarian. Morison wrote in one annual report that “Education always proceeds from the above downward, from the best to the common minds, from the leaders of the people to the people themselves. Furnish... the foundations of intelligence and thought, and they will... stimulate and improve the whole community.\" [note number=\'35\']Qtd. in Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, “PIB Ref. Library. 8-Morison\'s Philosophy of Excellence,” in George Peabody (1795-1869): A-Z Handbook of the Massachusetts-Born Merchant in the South, London-Based Banker, and Philanthropist\'s Life, Influence, and Related People, Places, Events, and Institutions. . 11 Mar. 2011.[/note] When the Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 in close proximity to the Peabody—in large part to take advantage of the library—the tendency of the librarians to address scholarly needs and “approved literature” over popular desires was given additional momentum. In keeping with these ideas, the Peabody’s librarians kept careful track of their readers’ choices, noting with special caution the numbers of novels that were requested. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'10\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-10-annual-report-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-399\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-399\" title=\"fig 10 annual report detail\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-10-annual-report-detail-336x452.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"452\" /></a>Detail from First Annual Report showing chart of books read, with special mention of fiction.[/note] This schism at the heart of the library’s collecting paradigm was not unique to the Peabody; the question of reading matter—should it offer leisure for the masses or the means of social uplift?—was central to the public library movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. [note number=\'36\']See, for example, Alexis McCrossen, “’One Cathedral More’ or ‘Mere Lounging Places for Bummers’? The Cultural Politics of Leisure and the Public Library in Gilded Age America,” Libraries &amp; Culture 41.2 (2006): 169-188; Paul Sturges, “The Public Library and Reading by the Masses: Historical Perspectives on the USA and Britain 1850-1900,” ; Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, Upon the Objects to be Attained by the Establishment of a Public Library, 12 Dec. 2010.[/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, the Peabody’s “desiderata” acquisitions and librarians’ selections were supplemented by book donations from local elites—bibliophiles with extensive private collections that included incunabula, classical authors in Renaissance editions, expensive illustrated atlases. At the same time, book donations came in from more plebian sources. The Peabody’s growth overlapped with the decline of the local social libraries, and it eventually absorbed some of the books from the Library Company of Baltimore, Robinson’s Circulating Library and several small professional and mechanics’ libraries. And I haven’t even touched on the Peabody’s twentieth-century fate.\r\n\r\nThe variety of philanthropic impulses, resource streams and classification philosophies that have fed the Peabody over the 150 years of its existence has led to a collection that does not so much map the nineteenth-century mind as signal its odd amalgam of popular and scholarly investments. The Peabody’s collection effectively evades succinct description—at least, any kind of description that pretends to be coherent, that is not perforated by its stakes in local history, library history, book history. But more importantly, it suggests the degree to which accident and opportunity and prejudice and wealth and the changing winds of cataloguing rules shape any archive. Description, which should be the most fundamental tool of communication between librarians and researchers, turns out to be utterly elusive. Yet we do not know what to replace them with, these inadequate descriptions, these exercises in stilted and partial translation.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>2. The Researcher’s Progress.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>I am preparing for my class about women and nineteenth-century print culture, which meets in the Peabody; we have reached the part of the syllabus where we look at gift books and annuals. I want students to examine several examples of these literary miscellanies, offering some illustration of their variety, and I have a list of such items that I have used in the past. But since I also want to show the students new acquisitions, I need to refresh my list. I will start with “gift book” as a keyword in the online catalogue.</blockquote>\r\nIn place of perfect and commensurate description—not possible—what we have are cataloguing systems that indexically represent collections through data and metadata that are, as I have already suggested, historically marked and inevitably inconsistent. In the case of the Peabody, these records are further compromised: Dewey cards developed from a nineteenth-century print index do not offer Library of Congress subject terms or detailed tables of contents; they also frequently lack other kinds of information. [note number=\'37\']Many of the electronic records for Peabody books have been copy-cataloged, that is, developed from records for identical books in other libraries. But these records might also be incomplete or inconsistent, given that many are quite old. The expense of original cataloging prevents our staff from creating full, new records for every item in the Peabody’s collection of over 300,000 titles.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'11\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-11-ddc-cards/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-400\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-400\" title=\"fig 11 ddc cards\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-11-ddc-cards-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Dewey cards for “gift books.”[/note] My search for “gift book” will turn up bequests—the term “gift book” is often attached to these donations—and it will miss many of the nineteenth-century gift books and annuals in our collection whose records lack subject classifications, or whose subject classifications reference the book’s contents, not its format. For example, the 1848 Rough and Ready Annual: or, Military Souvenir published by Appleton’s has been assigned the subject “Mexican War, 1846-1848—Anecdotes.” [note number=\'38\']Rough and Ready Annual (New York: D. Appleton; Philadelphia: G.S. Appleton, 1848).[/note]\r\n\r\nThe problem of finding is perhaps only a sub-set of the problem of description, but I want to give it special attention because it introduces another variable: the physical space of the object. My search for gift books in the Peabody also entails the privilege of retrieving the books from the stacks. There are two search processes, the intellectual and the physical, that I must navigate. The intellectual search in this case requires a variety of keyword/date range combinations, and ultimately, recourse to my prepared bibliography—a holdover from pre-catalogue research methods. Now the second search begins.\r\n\r\nThe Rough and Ready Annual is at 973.62 A5121, in the “general history of North America; United States” category. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'12\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-12-rr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-401\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-401\" title=\"fig 12 r&amp;r\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-12-rr-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Rough and Ready Annual in the stacks.[/note] This call number range is on the second floor, west side. Other items on my list are in very different parts of the library. Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them, edited by the temperance writer T. S. Arthur and published in London, has been given the call number 813 A7910 duodecimo—fourth floor east, in the “American literature in English, fiction” section. [note number=\'39\']Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them (London: Knight &amp; Co., [1857]). This title does not appear in at least one Arthur bibliography; see Donald A Koch, \"Timothy Shay Arthur,\" Antebellum Writers in New York and the South, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit: Gale Research, 1979), from Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Feb. 2011. To check on this, I need Mitchell Sharpe Jr.’s A Bibliography of the Published Books of Timothy Shay Arthur (Atlanta: Emory University, 1954), a typewritten quarto at 012 A791S, but it seems to be missing.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'13\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-13-orange/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-402\" title=\"fig 13 orange\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-13-orange-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Orange Blossoms in the stacks.[/note] Arthur shows up again as co-editor of The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present, which has received more extensive description as it contains the first printing of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Siope.” [note number=\'40\']The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present (Baltimore: Bayly and Burns, [1838]).[/note] We have two copies of this very genteel little gift book, one at 808.83 B2175 (rhetoric &amp; collections of literature), and one at 810.8 C297 (American literature in English). The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons is in the rare book room at the south end of the third floor. [note number=\'41\']The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons (London: The Religious Tract Society, ca. 1850).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'14\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-14-rbr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-403\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-403\" title=\"fig 14 rbr\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-14-rbr-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The rare book room.[/note] In this case, the book’s rarity has to do with a lovely fore-edge painting. It has been assigned to 820.8 N42017 (general books about literature). On the other end of the “rare” continuum is The Family Circle and Parlor Annual, volume 5 in a series, which is shelved up on the sixth floor with the periodicals at 051 F198 (serials in American English). [note number=\'42\']The Family Circle and Parlor Annual (New York: Comstock, 1847).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'15\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-15-parlor/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-404\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-404\" title=\"fig 15 parlor\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-15-parlor-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Parlor Annual in the stacks.[/note]\r\n\r\nI’ll fill out call slips for each book, stick the slips into red flags, and put the flags in an order that will help me chart a logical course through the stacks. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'16\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-16-slips/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-405\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-405\" title=\"fig 16 slips\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-16-slips-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Call slips and flags.[/note] It’s easiest to start on the sixth floor and work one’s way down, picking up books along the way. Usually I find other interesting items as I go, so I carry a batch of blank call slips and extra flags. (On this occasion, for example, I find The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse; published in 1813 and inscribed by its owner in 1817, it pre-dates by several years the official beginning of the gift book phenomenon. It might be more of a “literary almanac.” [note number=\'43\']The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse (Philadelphia: David Hogan, 1813).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'17\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-17-new-reader/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-406\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-406\" title=\"fig 17 new reader\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-17-new-reader-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Inscription in The New American Reader.[/note]) Usually I am also unable to locate at least one of the books I have set out to find. Most likely the book has been misshelved, so I’ll check the quartos and folios, which are shelved separately; then I’ll check the rare book room’s octavo, duodecimo and quarto shelving areas. It used to astonish me that books were still shelved by format in the Peabody, but it does save space. At the same time, this shelving system—along with the multiple distinct areas within the library where books may reside, eg the rare book room, the reference section, the genealogy books, the Limited Editions Club, and several discrete named collections—means that retrieving a few books can take quite a long time, as I traipse up and down the six floors of the library, thread through stacks, open secured doors with multiple keys, turn lights on and off, and maneuver a book truck in and out of a tiny service elevator built in the 1920s. By the end of the journey, the library and I will have exchanged dust; I’ll take on a few streaks of red rot, and the library will have taken in particles from my body as well.\r\n\r\nWhile the Peabody is unique, these conditions are not in the end very unusual. In terms of the intellectual search, the absence of “gift book” from many of the catalogue records is no less egregious than the absence of other information—the names of all the contributors; the subjects of the illustrations. The metadata is potentially infinite. The “gift book” only exists as a category because of scholars who teased out this cultural phenomenon; it would be very difficult to define its absolute borders. In terms of the physical search, the Peabody might be messier than, say, a rare book library that has assigned current LC call numbers to all its contents and houses them in compact shelving, but it exemplifies the general on-the-ground situation. As I wind my way through the Peabody stacks, I remember how much more difficult it is to gather research materials from several different institutions.\r\n\r\nThe fact is, for scholars who rely on archives, research is something you do only after you have already undertaken a rigorous search. It is the search that provides you with the foundational sense of your subject. But the search is rarely acknowledged or accredited; even the foot-soldier craft of bibliography, the link between “librarianship” and “scholarship,” has largely lost its scholarly status.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>3. An Architecture of Disctinction.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A non-affiliate researcher contacts the Peabody about our H. L. Mencken collections. Since she will bring a couple of graduate students with her, I set up a group work space in one of the library alcoves where the three of them can share materials and talk without disturbing other readers. I pull the requested volumes with the help of some students and set the cart up within easy reach of the alcove. When the researchers arrive, I show them the Mencken collections on the ground floor. Then I lead them to their group work space and leave them, returning to the glassed-in office behind the reading room, the vantage point that allows me to monitor the otherwise empty reading room.</blockquote>\r\nIn “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” a team of Dutch sociologists investigates the library as a space that is strongly marked by situational norms—“knowledge-based beliefs about how to behave in particular situations that are shaped by social influence.” [note number=\'44\']Henk Aarts and Ap Dijksterhuis, “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84.1 (2003), 19.[/note] Their research leads them to argue, however, that such norms do not require direct social influences to be triggered; in fact, “the situation can activate mental representations of normative behaviors automatically. And once activated, these representations provide the knowledge necessary for guiding one’s own situationally appropriate behavior.” [note number=\'45\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 19.[/note] Physical environments do not necessarily prompt these behaviors; rather, the behavior “depend[s] on whether the environment is of immediate behavioral relevance.” [note number=\'46\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 20.[/note] Talking in a quiet voice in the library, a normative behavior, is only activated for those who plan to visit the library.\r\n\r\nTen years ago, when the research for this article was conducted, the “silence of the library” was still a widespread norm. While the situation is now often reversed—in our main campus library, we must designate specific quiet areas because otherwise a sociable undergraduate din would take over—the norm of silence does continue to preside at the Peabody. Because it is off campus, the Peabody is often attractively under-populated compared to the crowded main library; it is mostly used by advanced researchers and those who seek a quiet place to study. The large central open area catches and amplifies even the smallest noises. The shelf-lined alcoves on either side of this central area offer the appearance of privacy, but in fact are little echo chambers. Visitors immediately detect these acoustics, and—except for the periodic tour groups—most spend their time in the Peabody in silence. But it is not just the physics of sound that shape behaviors here, as the Dutch researchers show; the social expectations of the space prefigure those behaviors.\r\n\r\nIn setting up a group work space for the Mencken researchers, I have quite deliberately contravened the usual norm of silence. Clearly, I am not inviting them to shout, and by putting them in an alcove in back, I have taken measures to protect any quiet-seeking visitors who might arrive. But in accordance with new ideas about the use of library space, my colleagues and I have decided that we must accommodate group study even if it might occasionally disrupt the silence desired by others. As it happens, the Mencken researchers’ conversation is eventually interrupted by a tour group, and the two activities play out side by side.\r\n\r\nI must admit that at moments I have mixed feelings about the tour groups and even the study cohorts. While my pedagogical instincts tend towards cheerful hub-bub, there is a part of me that is still in awe of the sanctuary-like atmosphere of the Peabody. John Morris called the library a “cathedral of books,” and clearly that’s what architect Edmund G. Lind had in mind. The central area with its grand skylight and the alcoves on its sides is like a nave bordered with chapels. Lind didn’t need a psychological study of environment-based situational norms to tell him that he might activate different behaviors within his building. The great central space inspires reverence—your eye is drawn to the skylight the way it would be drawn to the rose windows of Chartres, and on its way up catches row upon solemn row of books stowed behind gilded railings, a testament to the accumulated wisdom of the ages. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'18\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-18-skylight/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-407\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-407\" title=\"fig 18 skylight\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-18-skylight.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>The skylight in the George Peabody Library.[/note] But step into an alcove, especially on the ground floor where each is filled with an immense wooden table, and you instantly feel something else, something no less grand but more human. The alcoves are study-sized, and once you sit down at one of those dark, gleaming, broad tables, it is like you are the master of your own private library. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'19\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-19-alcove/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-408\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-408\" title=\"fig 19 alcove\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-19-alcove-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Alcove in the George Peabody Library.[/note]\r\n\r\nIronically, the Peabody’s architecture was out-dated by the time it was completed. With the professionalization of librarianship and the evolution of library science in the late nineteenth century, librarians like William Frederick Poole advocated for a functional rather than decorative design of interior library space. [note number=\'47\']See William Frederick Poole, Remarks on Library Construction (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1884).[/note] Moreover, the actual use of space in the Peabody in the late nineteenth century was at odds with its symbolic appeal. The main library was known as the “stack room”; readers were seated in a comparatively plain reading room on the other side of the main doors. In this arrangement, the librarians reigned inside the gorgeous “cathedral of books,” but the building’s potential to civilize the masses was lost.\r\n\r\nNow, of course, we do not send readers outside. Inside the “stack room,” we explicitly call visitors’ attention to its beauty to explain the connections between the library’s architecture and its collections—how both speak eloquently of Victorian values. At the same time, we who staff the library have relegated ourselves to its periphery. We work in the glassed-in room at one end that serves as a monitoring point and occasional classroom; the official “librarian’s office” in one corner—its luxurious proportions suggesting something like a sacristy and something like a robber baron’s lair—is now shared work-space stuffed with several desks and laden book trucks. There is another monitoring station near the main doors. I often do my work at the photography station, in the back of one of the alcoves [note type=\'figure\' number=\'20\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-20-station/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-409\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-409\" title=\"fig 20 station\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-20-station-336x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Photography station in the George Peabody Library.[/note]. It offers some privacy but is close enough to the central reading tables to be accessible to readers.\r\n\r\nThe space of the Peabody initiates other situational behaviors besides the norm of silence, and our work-station arrangements testify to this. The spatial re-centralizing of readers and marginalization of staff is not merely practical; it is a reflection of the modern office of librarianship. We are there to be of service, in a para-textual position. Consequently, our work should be out of sight; it should be separate from and secondary to the work that readers do. Our locations call upon us, in other words, to support the scholar’s effort to hide the “seams of [her] findings” by hiding the ways we contribute to that work—by the ways we sometimes do that work.\r\n\r\nI think about these complications as I escort the Mencken researchers to their table and walk back to the glassed-in office, where there is nothing pressing for me to do. I’d rather spend more time talking with them. I’d like to learn about their research and introduce them to some underappreciated parts of the collection. I’d like to share with them what I learned curating an exhibition of Mencken-related magazines and writing about one of those magazines. But I don’t want to get in their way; it’s likely that they are ready to get on with work that they don’t see as connected to mine. The professional norms of the archive are strong, and although I know how to talk about my research in many contexts—in presentations, interviews, hotel elevators—I haven’t figured out how to mix my scholarly role with the curatorial role I am supposed to play here, in the Peabody. In the end, I say nothing. Professional segregation is another kind of silence in the library.\r\n\r\nWe cannot change the archaeological record beneath our feet, but we can rearrange the fossils we dig up to create new narratives. We can tell different kinds of archive stories, including the story of what research in the archive was and is. Is it too idealistic to expect that dissolving the entrenched fantasies about archival research will make room for new methods? Is it naïve to imagine a space that, in putting into practice the archival turn’s preliminary insights about disciplinary and disorder, can support experimentation, facilitate connection across professions and disciplines, and enable new discoveries?','Disciplinarity and Disorder','','inherit','open','open','','2199-revision-12','','','2013-04-21 16:48:30','2013-04-21 16:48:30','',2199,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/2199-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(4047,1,'2013-04-21 16:48:42','2013-04-21 16:48:42','<h3>Students as Archivists</h3>\nBehind the scenes in special collections libraries and archives across the country, undergraduate students are being hired as part-time, temporary employees to assist with processing cultural-heritage materials. A recent survey of recipients of Cataloging Hidden Collections Special Collections and Archives grant projects<sup><a title=\"footnote\" href=\"#_ftn1\">[1]</a></sup> found that 97% of respondents employ student workers, and 73% reported that their student workers included undergraduate students. Students are assisting with civil rights collections at Emory University, modernist architectural drawings and plans at North Carolina State University, Jewish cultural-heritage materials at the College of Charleston, and Moravian historical documents at Lehigh University, to name just a few examples. Employing students in special collections libraries and archives is not a new practice; indeed, many of today\'s career librarians and archivists were once student workers themselves. Generally this is a budget-driven practice: students are in need of work and their labor is relatively inexpensive. The educational impact on students, however, is not widely understood or even acknowledged. How does working in archives impact students themselves? What skills do they acquire? Is their library employment connected to their studies? Does this work experience influence their career path? How does engagement with cultural-heritage materials affect their learning in the digital age?\n<h3>Archivists as Educators</h3>\nStudent workers require management: recruitment, training, oversight, and mentorship. In fact, when viewed strictly as employees, student workers—a transitory population with jam-packed, fluctuating schedules—do not represent the ideal work force. At the same time, we know that employment in the archives gives students an exceptional opportunity for applied learning under the guidance of professional archivists who can provide for the growth of intellectual and practical skills. These skills include exposure to primary sources combined with hands-on training in cataloging, processing, preserving, and digitizing such materials. Working with primary sources involves precisely the kind of active, integrative, experiential learning that is vital to inspiring undergraduate research.<sup><a title=\"footnote\" href=\"#_ftn2\">[2]</a></sup> So, how can we better reconcile the challenges of employing student workers with the potential educational benefits of such labor? We believe that by recognizing and empowering archivists in their roles as teachers, the informal or “hidden” learning that student workers gain can become more visible.\n<h3>Linking Archival Work to the Educational Missions of Universities and Colleges</h3>\nBased on anecdotal evidence, we know that student workers\' exposure to primary sources and the skills and technologies necessary to preserve, manage, and study them is resulting in student learning, informing choices of major, and altering career paths. Yet, the informal or \"hidden learning” that is occurring behind the scenes in libraries and archives is treated largely as a side effect, a fortunate but contingent byproduct of labor, rather than as an integral part of the educational mission. We hope this situation changes with closer attention to the educational experiences of students working in the archives. To that end, we are currently engaged in a study that investigates the impact of working in libraries and archives on students involved in civil rights-related hidden collections projects. These civil rights collections—records of organizations such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Alianza Hispano-Americana, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Voter Education Project—are often directly connected to local communities and relevant to contemporary issues and curricula. Most importantly, students are often able to recognize themselves and their communities in the collections, thus increasing the potential for transformative educational experiences. We believe that such work should be acknowledged as precisely the kind of applied learning that most higher education institutions are now actively pursuing in the form of internships, field work, and community service. Our study raises the following questions:\n<ul>\n	<li>What if “student workers” were perceived as “student archivists,” “young researchers,” or “apprentice scholars”?</li>\n	<li>What if student participation in the work of libraries and archives was foregrounded and celebrated, instead of remaining largely anonymous?</li>\n	<li>What if training students was seen as central to the business of library and archival practice in educational institutions?</li>\n	<li>What if the work students were being hired to do was considered essential to their educational experience and the mission of their universities?</li>\n	<li>What if professional archivists emphasized their role as teachers within institutions of higher education?</li>\n</ul>\n<br></br>\n<h3>Archival Work, the Digital Humanities, and the Library Commons</h3>\nConnecting informal learning to university education requires that librarians, archivists, and technologists view themselves as educators working alongside faculty to<em> </em>help students become researchers in a hybrid analog-digital world. Twenty-first-century models for collaborative learning and teaching are emerging, especially in the digital humanities, where students study primary sources in digital formats and apply new technologies to pose and answer research questions. In the digital humanities, students are being guided by faculty to identify and study research questions using new technologies in partnership with their peers. At many institutions, such classes and activities are being supported in Library Commons\' spaces—multi-service research and learning hubs that are technology-enabled and staffed by professional librarians and technologists. How might the hidden learning that students are experiencing behind the scenes in special collections libraries and archives be connected to the digital humanities and the Library Commons?\n<h3>Teaching the Whole Student: Faculty, Librarian, Archivist, and Technologist as a Team</h3>\nCreating an integrated learning experience demands a symbiotic mindset—a team approach—with archivists, librarians, technologists, and faculty working together to support student learning through engagement with primary sources and new technologies. At the very least, expanding access to primary sources, both physical and digital, in the undergraduate curriculum will require intensifying and scaling coordination and collaboration between the faculty member teaching disciplinary content, the librarian teaching research strategies, the technologist teaching digital tools, and the archivist teaching primary sources. The aim of such coordination would be to provide an environment in which students were more likely to develop skills necessary for success in the knowledge-driven economy of the twenty-first century. Today\'s students must learn not only to find and analyze reliable information, but also to communicate effectively, solve problems, work in teams, use advanced digital tools to create new knowledge, and engage in multicultural communities. The phenomenon of student employment on archival projects is happening largely undetected at the margins of higher education, but it could inspire a new approach to undergraduate learning that foregrounds the role of cultural heritage in the digital age.\n<div class=\"footnote\"><sup title=\"footnote\">[1]</sup> The <a href=\"http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/index.html\">Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives</a> grant program, funded by The Mellon Foundation and administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources, addresses the problem of “hidden collections”: millions of cultural heritage materials held by libraries and archives that have not been adequately described and remain unavailable to researchers.\n<sup title=\"footnote\">[2]</sup> See, the definition of “high-impact educational practices” articulated by the Association of American Colleges and Universities LEAP (Liberal Education and America’s Promise) Program: http://www.aacu.org/leap/.</div>','Hidden Learning: Undergraduates at Work in the Archives','Student workers require management:  recruitment, training, oversight, and mentorship. In fact, when viewed strictly as employees, student workers—a transitory population with jam-packed, fluctuating schedules—do not represent the ideal work force. At the same time, we know that employment in the archives gives students an exceptional opportunity for applied learning under the guidance of professional archivists who can provide for the growth of intellectual and practical skills. ','inherit','open','open','','1899-revision-5','','','2013-04-21 16:48:42','2013-04-21 16:48:42','',1899,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/1899-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4048,1,'2013-04-21 16:48:49','2013-04-21 16:48:49','Archival research is an important source for coursework and teaching, as professors and instructors are increasingly incorporating work with primary documents into undergraduate courses. Because access to primary resources is often restricted by research room hours, and can be further limited because of preservation concerns if materials are extremely fragile or if collections are not fully inventoried, this kind of research takes time. Despite this, many student researchers leave archives with a great deal more information than they will be able to explore in their written scholarship. Students’ research goals also inform their actual practice, although, due to the many pleasures and challenges of working with primary documents, even the best intentions often change dramatically when working through a collection of materials. Whatever the situation, undergraduates working with primary documents need to be aware of a number of general recommendations, in addition to any particular archive’s specific rules.\n\nThough the individual archive or library is the best first source of information for working with specific collections, the following resources provide general information about working effectively with archival materials that may be of use to students and/or their teachers.\n<h1>Resources for Working with Primary Source Documents</h1>\n<h3></h3>\n<h3>Comprehensive</h3>\nSchmidt, Laura. “Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research.” <em>Society of American Archivists</em>. 2011. <a href=\"http://www2.archivists.org/usingarchives\">http://www2.archivists.org/usingarchives</a>. An excellent primer for using archives, with considerations such as: “What Are Archives and How do They Differ from Libraries?”; “Requesting Materials Remotely”; “Planning to Visit an Archive”; and “Notes on Copyright, Restrictions, and Unprocessed Collections.”\n<h3>Handling Documents</h3>\nNational Archives (UK). “Handling Documents.” <em>The National Archives.</em> 2011. <a href=\"http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/visit/document-handling.htm\">http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/visit/document-handling.htm</a>. A basic overview for handling documents, including best practices and an explanation of common types of documents and handling needs.\n\nNational Park Service. “Handling Archival Documents and Manuscripts.” <em>Conserve O Gram </em>19, no. 17 (Sept. 1996). <a href=\"http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/19-17.pdf\">http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/19-17.pdf</a>. A brief guide focused on handling archival documents and manuscripts organized into a series of do’s and don’ts, including setting up the research area, moving materials, and dealing with problems (brittle, damaged, attached, and contaminated materials).\n<h3>Working in Archives</h3>\nArchives of American Art. “Frequently Asked Questions.” <em>Archives of American Art: Ask Us.</em> 2011. <a href=\"http://www.aaa.si.edu/askus/faq\">http://www.aaa.si.edu/askus/faq</a>: A general FAQ addressing basic questions and providing policy information, such as the need for researchers to schedule appointments, a useful reminder no matter which archive you plan to use.\n\nNew York University Libraries. “Using Archives and Manuscripts.” <em>New York</em><em> University</em><em> Libraries: Research Guides.</em> 2011. <a href=\"http://nyu.libguides.com/content.php?pid=38517\">http://nyu.libguides.com/content.php?pid=38517</a>. Intended for researchers using NYU collections, this guide also provides general relevant information, including definitions, recommendations on handling materials, and best practices for archival research.\n<h3>Teaching</h3>\nThe National Archives Experience (US). “Tool Box.”<em> The National Archives Experience: Educators and Students. </em>2011. <a href=\"http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/tool-box.html\">http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/tool-box.html</a>. The “Tool Box” includes many basic documents explaining the benefits of teaching with primary sources, basics for teaching with primary documents, and links to teaching workshops and collaborative opportunities (<a href=\"http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/collaboration.html\">http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/collaboration.html</a>)\n\nNational Archives of Australia. <em>Vrroom: Virtual Reading Room</em>. 2011. <a href=\"http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/\">http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/</a>. With a tagline of “easy access to archival records for teachers and students,” <em>Vrroom</em> is designed as a full virtual reading room, allowing users to search and browse archival collections, as well as providing support for teaching and research.\n<h3>Working with Technology in Archives</h3>\nBateman, Kirklin, Sheila Brennan, Douglas Mudd, and Paula Petrik. “Taking a Byte Out of the Archives: Making Technology Work for You.” <em>Perspectives Online </em>43, no. 1: (Jan. 2005)\n<a href=\"http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2005/0501/0501arc1.cfm\">http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2005/0501/0501arc1.cfm</a>. A useful overview of working with technology in archives, as well as maintaining electronic documents and notes from archival research. Published in 2005, the guide is somewhat dated (it does not include Zotero, for example, which rolled out in 2006).','How to Work with Primary Source Documents','','inherit','open','open','','2045-revision-5','','','2013-04-21 16:48:49','2013-04-21 16:48:49','',2045,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/2045-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4049,1,'2013-04-18 21:12:23','2013-04-18 21:12:23','<a href=\"http://thewalters.org/earth/beaupre/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1977\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1977\" title=\"beaupre\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/beaupre.png\" alt=\"Beaupre\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" /></a>','Walters - Beaupre Devos','','inherit','open','open','','1975-revision-5','','','2013-04-18 21:12:23','2013-04-18 21:12:23','',1975,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/1975-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4050,1,'2013-04-18 21:12:28','2013-04-18 21:12:28','<a href=\"http://thewalters.org/earth/casket/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1970\"><img src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/casket1.png\" alt=\"Romances Casket\" title=\"casket\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1970\" /></a>','Walters - Romances Casket Tkacs','','inherit','open','open','','1967-revision-5','','','2013-04-18 21:12:28','2013-04-18 21:12:28','',1967,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/1967-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4051,1,'2013-04-18 21:12:32','2013-04-18 21:12:32','<a href=\"http://thewalters.org/earth/amazon/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1973\"><img src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/amazon1.png\" alt=\"Amazon Dowdle\" title=\"amazon\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1973\" /></a>','Walters - Amazon Dowdle','','inherit','open','open','','1957-revision-5','','','2013-04-18 21:12:32','2013-04-18 21:12:32','',1957,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/1957-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4052,1,'2013-04-18 20:49:08','2013-04-18 20:49:08','<p><iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/40877170?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"></iframe></p>\n','The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln','','inherit','open','open','','1752-revision-3','','','2013-04-18 20:49:08','2013-04-18 20:49:08','',1752,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/1752-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4053,1,'2013-04-18 21:10:33','2013-04-18 21:10:33','“So, how do we bring students to our table?” That was the question a special collections librarian asked in 1999. <sup><a id=\"ref1\" href=\"#fn1\">[1]</a></sup> Now, in 2012, the question is no longer <em>how</em>: “Teaching with primary source materials is unquestionably ‘hot’ in higher education [as] authentic rare books, manuscripts, or archival documents\" appear in many undergraduate classrooms. <sup><a id=\"ref2\" href=\"#fn2\">[2]</a></sup>\n\nThe table is full; the effort to bring undergraduates into special collections and archives has been enormously successful. What matters now is how to turn these encounters to account. What happens in the archival laboratory, a place where students are actively involved in research, stewardship, publication, and exhibits? How do librarians, curators, archivists, instructors, and technology specialists collaborate to get such projects off the ground? How do we make use of these encounters to develop research and interpretive skills, showcase students’ findings, and learn from their discoveries? What do students report that they have gained through their archival experiences?\n\nIn this issue of “Archives, Remixed,” we present six case studies illustrating inventive solutions to these dilemmas of success. The parameters and formats of these projects demonstrate the diversity of ways to teach with primary source materials: not all of the projects take place in a classroom context (although some do); not all the student work is authored singly (although some is). Some projects involve one institution, while others involve partnerships with local organizations or other universities or colleges; some projects are more analog, others more digital; and some end when the student’s work is complete, while others continue. The projects all have historical claims, but the array of objects under consideration—architectural drawings, photographs, ancient statuary, newspaper clippings, rare books, personal mementos—speaks to many disciplines. The academic institutions where these projects originate, from a community college to liberal arts colleges to a research university, vary as much as the projects themselves.\n\nEach case study focuses on the work students produce in these archival encounters. On each case-study page, you will find a sample of student work accompanied by a project description; commentary on the project by the student(s); commentary from the teachers, librarians, and/or technologists who structured the projects and guided students through them; as well as links to related or additional resources.\n\nWe invite you to explore, to comment, and to use these case studies as fodder for your own research and teaching projects.\n<div class=\"footnote\"><sup id=\"fn1\">[1]</sup>Allen, Susan M. “Rare Books and the College Library: Current Practices in Marrying Undergraduates to Special Collections.” Rare Books &amp; Manuscripts Librarianship 13.2 (Spring 1999): 110-19.</div>\n<div class=\"footnote\"><sup id=\"fn1\">[2]</sup> Bahde, Anne. “Taking the Show on the Road: Special Collections Instruction in the Campus Classroom.” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, &amp; Cultural Heritage 12.2 (Fall 2011): 75.</div>','Undergraduates in the Archives','What happens in the archival laboratory, a place where students are actively involved in research, stewardship, publication, and exhibits? These six case studies answer this question by showcasing student work that emerges from hands-on archival work, including course papers, robots, digitized images, documentary film, and more.  Each case study features the student work, accompanied and contextualized by a project description; commentary on the project by the student(s); and commentary from the teachers, librarians, and/or technologists who worked with the students.','inherit','open','open','','1711-revision-4','','','2013-04-18 21:10:33','2013-04-18 21:10:33','',1711,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/1711-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4054,1,'2013-04-18 20:49:16','2013-04-18 20:49:16','<iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/37986760?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"></iframe>','The Development of Masculinity','','inherit','open','open','','1698-revision-3','','','2013-04-18 20:49:16','2013-04-18 20:49:16','',1698,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue/%issues%/uncategorized/1698-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0);


INSERT INTO `archive_posts` VALUES (4633,3,'2013-06-15 21:45:11','2013-06-15 21:45:11','In many ways the needs of and pressures on data curation are the same across the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. Moreover, since data curation, like other information sciences, is a “meta-discipline” ((Marcia J. Bates, “The Invisible Substrate of Information Science,” <i>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</i> 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043-50.)) rather than being strictly of the humanities, social sciences, or hard sciences, there are shared concepts and terminology that we can apply to the problems of data curation across disciplines. ((See Allen H. Renear, Molly Dolan, Kevin Trainor, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Towards a Cross-Disciplinary Notion of Data Level in Data Curation,” November 11, 2009, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547</a>.)) Certainly, the technical challenges of preserving digital information—unstable media, basic bit-level data integrity, rendering many different file formats over time, architectures, and the economics of data storage—are shared problems. These pressures may be of differing intensity across communities. Many humanists do not (yet) have to contemplate data volumes measured in exabytes as astronomers do. Already, though, humanists are working with volumes of data too large to manipulate and analyze with conventional, widely available tools; this trend in humanities research is only likely to grow as researchers devote increasing attention to the contemporary moment. ((“Big Data,” <i>Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia</i>, February 9, 2013, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_data&amp;oldid=537356997\">http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_data&amp;oldid=537356997</a>.)) The basic structure of the scholarly communication economy is another shared challenge for data curation across the disciplines. Data curation must engage with which scholarly outputs are “published,” how credit is apportioned for them (the citation of datasets, for example), and the role of for-profit corporations in the dissemination of research (in relation to open access and open data movements).\r\n\r\nEven in the areas where there may be the most divergence about the needs of and pressures on data curation—the evidentiary role of information, the place of “interpretation,” and the nature of “proof”—I think there is more commonality than difference. As the amount of information grows and as the work of research in many disciplines increasingly involves managing and analyzing larger and larger amounts of information, human judgment is paired increasingly with (automated) machine analysis. (Part of data curation is working better with “robots.”) More rigorous conceptual and semantic modeling is needed to incorporate automated algorithmic processes into research—from the search engines everyone uses to the sophisticated data-filtering techniques necessary for working with streams of data coming from large telescopes. ((I am indebted to Sayeed Choudhury for the telescope example; any failing in the paraphrasing is mine. Personal conversation.)) Because machines increasingly and inevitably mediate our work with data, the challenges of preserving (human) meaning and interpretation in computational environments for data curation are significant, and this is true across the social sciences, humanities, and the sciences. ((Compare David Dubin, Karen M. Wickett, and Simone Sacchi, “Content, Format, and Interpretation,” <i>Balisage: The Markup Conference 2011</i>, August 2 - 5, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html\">http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html</a>, doi:10.4242/BalisageVol7.Dubin01; and Julia Flanders and Trevor Muñoz, “An Introduction to Humanities Data Curation,” <i>DH Curation Guide</i>, September 22, 2011, <a href=\"http://guide.dhcuration.org/intro/\">http://guide.dhcuration.org/intro/</a>.))','Munoz - Question 2','In many ways the needs of and pressures on data curation are the same across the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. Moreover, since data curation, like other information sciences, is a “meta-discipline” rather than being strictly of the humanities, social sciences, or hard sciences, there are shared concepts and terminology that we can apply to the problems of data curation across disciplines. ','publish','open','open','','munoz-question-2','','','2013-06-22 04:32:14','2013-06-22 04:32:14','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4633',0,'post','',0),(4634,3,'2013-06-15 21:44:12','2013-06-15 21:44:12','In many ways the needs of and pressures on data curation are the same across the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. Moreover, since data curation, like other information sciences, is a “meta-discipline” ((Marcia J. Bates, “The Invisible Substrate of Information Science,” <i>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</i> 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043-50.)) rather than being strictly of the humanities, social sciences, or hard sciences, there are shared concepts and terminology that we can apply to the problems of data curation across disciplines ((See Allen H. Renear, Molly Dolan, Kevin Trainor, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Towards a Cross-Disciplinary Notion of Data Level in Data Curation,” November 11, 2009, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547</a>.)). Certainly, the technical challenges of preserving digital information—unstable media, basic bit-level data integrity, rendering many different file formats over time, architectures, and the economics of data storage—are shared problems. These pressures may be of differing intensity across communities. Many humanists do not (yet) have to contemplate data volumes measured in exabytes as astronomers do. Already, though, humanists are working with volumes of data too large to manipulate and analyze with conventional, widely available tools; this trend in humanities research is only likely to grow as researchers devote increasing attention to the contemporary moment ((.The basic structure of the scholarly communication economy is another shared challenge for data curation across the disciplines. Data curation must engage with which scholarly outputs are “published,” how credit is apportioned for them (the citation of datasets, for example), and the role of for-profit corporations in the dissemination of research (in relation to open access and open data movements).\n\n&nbsp;\n\nEven in the areas where there may be the most divergence about the needs of and pressures on data curation—the evidentiary role of information, the place of “interpretation,” and the nature of “proof”—I think there is more commonality than difference. As the amount of information grows and as the work of research in many disciplines increasingly involves managing and analyzing larger and larger amounts of information, human judgment is paired increasingly with (automated) machine analysis. (Part of data curation is working better with “robots.”) More rigorous conceptual and semantic modeling is needed to incorporate automated algorithmic processes into research—from the search engines everyone uses to the sophisticated data-filtering techniques necessary for working with streams of data coming from large telescopes.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn4\"><sup><sup>[iv]</sup></sup></a> Because machines increasingly and inevitably mediate our work with data, the challenges of preserving (human) meaning and interpretation in computational environments for data curation are significant, and this is true across the social sciences, humanities, and the sciences.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn5\"><sup><sup>[v]</sup></sup></a>\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\n\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" />\n\n<div>\n\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref4\"><sup><sup>[iv]</sup></sup></a> I am indebted to Sayeed Choudhury for the telescope example; any failing in the paraphrasing is mine. Personal conversation.\n\n</div>\n<div>\n\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref5\"><sup><sup>[v]</sup></sup></a> Compare David Dubin, Karen M. Wickett, and Simone Sacchi, “Content, Format, and Interpretation,” <i>Balisage: The Markup Conference 2011</i>, August 2 - 5, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html\">http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html</a>, doi:10.4242/BalisageVol7.Dubin01; and Julia Flanders and Trevor Muñoz, “An Introduction to Humanities Data Curation,” <i>DH Curation Guide</i>, September 22, 2011, http://guide.dhcuration.org/intro/.\n\n</div>\n</div>','Munoz - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4633-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:44:12','2013-06-15 21:44:12','',4633,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4633-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4635,3,'2013-06-15 22:36:52','2013-06-15 22:36:52','In many ways the needs of and pressures on data curation are the same across the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. Moreover, since data curation, like other information sciences, is a “meta-discipline” ((Marcia J. Bates, “The Invisible Substrate of Information Science,” <i>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</i> 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043-50.)) rather than being strictly of the humanities, social sciences, or hard sciences, there are shared concepts and terminology that we can apply to the problems of data curation across disciplines. ((See Allen H. Renear, Molly Dolan, Kevin Trainor, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Towards a Cross-Disciplinary Notion of Data Level in Data Curation,” November 11, 2009, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547</a>.)) Certainly, the technical challenges of preserving digital information—unstable media, basic bit-level data integrity, rendering many different file formats over time, architectures, and the economics of data storage—are shared problems. These pressures may be of differing intensity across communities. Many humanists do not (yet) have to contemplate data volumes measured in exabytes as astronomers do. Already, though, humanists are working with volumes of data too large to manipulate and analyze with conventional, widely available tools; this trend in humanities research is only likely to grow as researchers devote increasing attention to the contemporary moment. ((“Big Data,” <i>Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia</i>, February 9, 2013, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_data&amp;oldid=537356997\">http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_data&amp;oldid=537356997</a>.)) The basic structure of the scholarly communication economy is another shared challenge for data curation across the disciplines. Data curation must engage with which scholarly outputs are “published,” how credit is apportioned for them (the citation of datasets, for example), and the role of for-profit corporations in the dissemination of research (in relation to open access and open data movements).\n\nEven in the areas where there may be the most divergence about the needs of and pressures on data curation—the evidentiary role of information, the place of “interpretation,” and the nature of “proof”—I think there is more commonality than difference. As the amount of information grows and as the work of research in many disciplines increasingly involves managing and analyzing larger and larger amounts of information, human judgment is paired increasingly with (automated) machine analysis. (Part of data curation is working better with “robots.”) More rigorous conceptual and semantic modeling is needed to incorporate automated algorithmic processes into research—from the search engines everyone uses to the sophisticated data-filtering techniques necessary for working with streams of data coming from large telescopes. ((I am indebted to Sayeed Choudhury for the telescope example; any failing in the paraphrasing is mine. Personal conversation.)) Because machines increasingly and inevitably mediate our work with data, the challenges of preserving (human) meaning and interpretation in computational environments for data curation are significant, and this is true across the social sciences, humanities, and the sciences. ((Compare David Dubin, Karen M. Wickett, and Simone Sacchi, “Content, Format, and Interpretation,” <i>Balisage: The Markup Conference 2011</i>, August 2 - 5, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html\">http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html</a>, doi:10.4242/BalisageVol7.Dubin01; and Julia Flanders and Trevor Muñoz, “An Introduction to Humanities Data Curation,” <i>DH Curation Guide</i>, September 22, 2011, <a href=\"http://guide.dhcuration.org/intro/\">http://guide.dhcuration.org/intro/</a>.))','Munoz - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4633-autosave','','','2013-06-15 22:36:52','2013-06-15 22:36:52','',4633,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4633-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4636,3,'2013-06-15 21:47:23','2013-06-15 21:47:23','Carrying out digital research (almost all research is now at least semi-digital) requires that both scholars and information professionals understand how to manage and curate data over its entire lifetime of interest. At the least, individual scholars must be able to document their data curation strategies and evaluate those of collaborators and other purveyors of data.\r\n\r\nIn important ways, data curation is not new. Drawing on increasingly precise conceptual definitions of “data”—information systematically asserted as evidence. ((For extended discussion see Allen H. Renear, Simone Sacchi, and Karen M. Wickett, “Definitions of Dataset in the Scientific and Technical Literature,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 47, no. 1 (2010): 1-4, doi:10.1002/meet.14504701240; and Dubin, et al., “Content, Format, and Interpretation.”)) I would hope to convince those who are not primarily data curators that data curation is important to them because the theories and practices of data curation are crucial to communicating the enduring meaning and intent of any scholarship or research in ways that are authentic, contextualized, and complete. The first beneficiaries of data curation work are researchers themselves. Jason Scott from the Internet Archive has said that metadata is a “love note” to the future. ((Jason Scott, “The Metadata Mania,” <i>ASCII</i>, June 26, 2011, <a href=\"http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3181\">http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3181</a>.)) In terms of keeping research information comprehensible and usable, even to the person who created it, the future doesn’t need to be far distant, as anyone who has tried to decipher, some months later, a partial reference citation in his notes or tried to remember all the variables of her topic modeling experiment can attest. The strategies for data curation may be as simple as file-naming conventions, data replication, and very basic description. Or, the strategies may be as complicated as managing the integrity and renderability of large, complex 3D representations of information that cannot be recovered after its moment of collection, during the stages of an archaeological excavation, for example.\r\n\r\nMark Sample defines scholarship as “a creative or intellectual act [that is] public and circulates in a community of peers that evaluates and builds upon it.” ((Sample, “When Does Service Become Scholarship?”)) From this definition, it follows that scholarship depends on good data curation practice, which enables the dissemination and circulation of research products in ways that other scholars can build upon.\r\n\r\nI also hope to convince those who are not primarily data curators of the importance of data curation by appealing to the public trust. Much of the research happening in the United States is funded by the public. The resulting data does not belong only to the researcher who creates it, but is held by that person as a public trust. Data curation is part of the ethical responsibility of good research, and that should concern everyone.','Munoz - Question 3','Carrying out digital research (almost all research is now at least semi-digital) requires that both scholars and information professionals understand how to manage and curate data over its entire lifetime of interest. At the least, individual scholars must be able to document their data curation strategies and evaluate those of collaborators and other purveyors of data.','publish','open','open','','munoz-question-3','','','2013-06-22 04:33:58','2013-06-22 04:33:58','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4636',0,'post','',0),(4637,3,'2013-06-15 21:47:21','2013-06-15 21:47:21','Carrying out digital research (almost all research is now at least semi-digital) requires that both scholars and information professionals understand how to manage and curate data over its entire lifetime of interest. At the least, individual scholars must be able to document their data curation strategies and evaluate those of collaborators and other purveyors of data.\n\nIn important ways, data curation is not new. Drawing on increasingly precise conceptual definitions of “data”—information systematically asserted as evidence ((For extended discussion see Allen H. Renear, Simone Sacchi, and Karen M. Wickett, “Definitions of Dataset in the Scientific and Technical Literature,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 47, no. 1 (2010): 1-4, doi:10.1002/meet.14504701240; and Dubin, et al., “Content, Format, and Interpretation.”)). I would hope to convince those who are not primarily data curators that data curation is important to them because the theories and practices of data curation are crucial to communicating the enduring meaning and intent of any scholarship or research in ways that are authentic, contextualized, and complete. The first beneficiaries of data curation work are researchers themselves. Jason Scott from the Internet Archive has said that metadata is a “love note” to the future ((Jason Scott, “The Metadata Mania,” <i>ASCII</i>, June 26, 2011, <a href=\"http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3181\">http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3181</a>.)). In terms of keeping research information comprehensible and usable, even to the person who created it, the future doesn’t need to be far distant, as anyone who has tried to decipher, some months later, a partial reference citation in his notes or tried to remember all the variables of her topic modeling experiment can attest. The strategies for data curation may be as simple as file-naming conventions, data replication, and very basic description. Or, the strategies may be as complicated as managing the integrity and renderability of large, complex 3D representations of information that cannot be recovered after its moment of collection, during the stages of an archaeological excavation, for example.\n\nMark Sample defines scholarship as “a creative or intellectual act [that is] public and circulates in a community of peers that evaluates and builds upon it.” ((Sample, “When Does Service Become Scholarship?”)) From this definition, it follows that scholarship depends on good data curation practice, which enables the dissemination and circulation of research products in ways that other scholars can build upon.\n\nI also hope to convince those who are not primarily data curators of the importance of data curation by appealing to the public trust. Much of the research happening in the United States is funded by the public. The resulting data does not belong only to the researcher who creates it, but is held by that person as a public trust. Data curation is part of the ethical responsibility of good research, and that should concern everyone.','Munoz - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4636-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:47:21','2013-06-15 21:47:21','',4636,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4636-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4638,3,'2013-06-15 21:50:19','2013-06-15 21:50:19','Preparing the lectures for an introductory training course on data curation for humanists led to my most enlightening moment so far. In trying to explain the role of social factors in supporting preservation and the re-use of data, I started to see more points of convergence between data curation and work on “crowdsourcing” and closely related ideas of public humanities. This convergence is an effect of the changed information environment for “scholarly” data. Specifically, library and information science (LIS) represent a body of theory and practice on connecting users with information. ((Carole L. Palmer, Allen H. Renear, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data,” December 2, 2008, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764</a>.)) New LIS research on questions of data “value,” which is closely tied to re-use and thus preservation, draws on this older tradition of service to user communities, to develop a thesis that “highly valuable research data are anti-fragile; they are capable of not just persisting over time but actually gaining in value as they are stressed via application to new settings, used in diverse contexts, and transferred amongst a network of systems.” ((Nicholas M. Weber, Karen S. Baker, Andrea K. Thomer, Tiffany C. Chao, and Carole L. Palmer. “Value and Context in Data Use: Domain Analysis Revisited,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 49, no. 1 (2012): 1–10. doi:10.1002/meet.14504901168.)) Attention is a crucial factor in the survival of any particular dataset. The current configuration of Internet technologies has lowered the barrier to the loosely coordinated publishing of information to platforms (like Wikipedia), and these now concentrate an immense amount of attention (due in part to the market dominance of Google’s particular search engine technology). Thus, my moment of enlightenment came from realizing that data curators should be asking what public, web-based resources need to be curated alongside “local” data in order to increase the integration of a research project with a larger information network, which is a public good or a “commons.” Curation of one’s own data might well mean working on someone else’s data—for example, by improving the coverage of women’s history in Wikipedia, ((Mia Ridge, “New Challenges in Digital History: Sharing Women’s History on Wikipedia - My Talk Notes,” <i>Open Objects</i>, March 23, 2013, <a href=\"http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html\">http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html</a>.)) which serves as a source, via things like DBpedia, for identifiers to be used in the “linked data cloud.”\r\n\r\nThe digital humanities exist at the intersection of computational technologies with the theories, practices, and research questions of the humanities. Digital humanists have been publishing scholarship to “the Web” since its inception (as documented through crucial early projects like <i><a href=\"http://vos.ucsb.edu/\">Voice of the Shuttle</a></i>). The persistence of interest on the part of digital humanists to put more of certain kinds of humanities scholarship into “public” spaces is supported by numerous examples. The enthusiasm for both using and providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to digitized collections, and in creating additions to massively popular publishing software such as WordPress for scholarly purposes, demonstrates this. In other words, the digital humanities engage with “the Web” for scholarly communication, advocacy, etc., but this engagement also has important curatorial and preservation consequences. Palmer, Renear, and Cragin envision that data curators “will build and maintain not only digital libraries and curated data sets, but also the associated indexing systems, metadata standards, ontologies, and retrieval systems.” ((Palmer, Renear, and Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data.”)) I would argue that these indexing systems and ontologies include open, web-based resources like Wikipedia (or maybe structured data resources derived from Wikipedia.) ((For example, <a href=\"http://www.freebase.com/\">http://www.freebase.com/</a>.)) Wikipedia is the quintessential “crowdsourced” project and its use as a shared data resource suggests that data curation needs will push scholars and librarians further toward participating in a public information sphere on the web as a way to support local datasets.','Munoz - Question 4','Preparing the lectures for an introductory training course on data curation for humanists led to my most enlightening moment so far. In trying to explain the role of social factors in supporting preservation and the re-use of data, I started to see more points of convergence between data curation and work on “crowdsourcing” and closely related ideas of public humanities. This convergence is an effect of the changed information environment for “scholarly” data.','publish','open','open','','munoz-question-4','','','2013-06-22 04:37:29','2013-06-22 04:37:29','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4638',0,'post','',0),(4684,3,'2013-06-15 22:39:49','2013-06-15 22:39:49','Preparing the lectures for an introductory training course on data curation for humanists led to my most enlightening moment so far. In trying to explain the role of social factors in supporting preservation and the re-use of data, I started to see more points of convergence between data curation and work on “crowdsourcing” and closely related ideas of public humanities. This convergence is an effect of the changed information environment for “scholarly” data. Specifically, library and information science (LIS) represent a body of theory and practice on connecting users with information. ((Carole L. Palmer, Allen H. Renear, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data,” December 2, 2008, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764</a>.)) New LIS research on questions of data “value,” which is closely tied to re-use and thus preservation, draws on this older tradition of service to user communities, to develop a thesis that “highly valuable research data are anti-fragile; they are capable of not just persisting over time but actually gaining in value as they are stressed via application to new settings, used in diverse contexts, and transferred amongst a network of systems.” ((Nicholas M. Weber, Karen S. Baker, Andrea K. Thomer, Tiffany C. Chao, and Carole L. Palmer. “Value and Context in Data Use: Domain Analysis Revisited,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 49, no. 1 (2012): 1–10. doi:10.1002/meet.14504901168.)) Attention is a crucial factor in the survival of any particular dataset. The current configuration of Internet technologies has lowered the barrier to the loosely coordinated publishing of information to platforms (like Wikipedia), and these now concentrate an immense amount of attention (due in part to the market dominance of Google’s particular search engine technology). Thus, my moment of enlightenment came from realizing that data curators should be asking what public, web-based resources need to be curated alongside “local” data in order to increase the integration of a research project with a larger information network, which is a public good or a “commons.” Curation of one’s own data might well mean working on someone else’s data—for example, by improving the coverage of women’s history in Wikipedia, ((Mia Ridge, “New Challenges in Digital History: Sharing Women’s History on Wikipedia - My Talk Notes,” <i>Open Objects</i>, March 23, 2013, <a href=\"http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html\">http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html</a>.)) which serves as a source, via things like DBpedia, for identifiers to be used in the “linked data cloud.”\r\n\r\nThe digital humanities exist at the intersection of computational technologies with the theories, practices, and research questions of the humanities. Digital humanists have been publishing scholarship to “the Web” since its inception (as documented through crucial early projects like <i><a href=\"http://vos.ucsb.edu/\">Voice of the Shuttle</a>)</i>. The persistence of interest on the part of digital humanists to put more of certain kinds of humanities scholarship into “public” spaces is supported by numerous examples. The enthusiasm for both using and providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to digitized collections, and in creating additions to massively popular publishing software such as WordPress for scholarly purposes, demonstrates this. In other words, the digital humanities engage with “the Web” for scholarly communication, advocacy, etc., but this engagement also has important curatorial and preservation consequences. Palmer, Renear, and Cragin envision that data curators “will build and maintain not only digital libraries and curated data sets, but also the associated indexing systems, metadata standards, ontologies, and retrieval systems.” ((Palmer, Renear, and Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data.”)) I would argue that these indexing systems and ontologies include open, web-based resources like Wikipedia (or maybe structured data resources derived from Wikipedia.) ((For example, <a href=\"http://www.freebase.com/\">http://www.freebase.com/</a>.)) Wikipedia is the quintessential “crowdsourced” project and its use as a shared data resource suggests that data curation needs will push scholars and librarians further toward participating in a public information sphere on the web as a way to support local datasets.','Munoz - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4638-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 22:39:49','2013-06-15 22:39:49','',4638,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4638-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4640,3,'2013-06-15 21:51:10','2013-06-15 21:51:10','The biggest issues facing data curation now relate to the challenges of managing change. More than specifics of technology, infrastructure, staffing, or training, there is a general problem of how to transition organizations, work roles, and resource allocations from old configurations to new ones. Curating data requires supporting information work alongside other research tasks, from the inception of research projects to the (re)use of research products in the future. Does the model of liaison librarians attached to (often several) departments support the intensive work that this might require? Does the IT staff that colleges currently provide to faculty support this work? These are open questions. With the pressures for change in the technology and funding environments, we must be willing to look for new solutions in the prevailingly conservative atmosphere of the academy. Data curation will have to be addressed in tandem with other challenges, such as open access to research outcomes and a holistic critique of the conditions of labor in academia, exactly because data curation is a social as well as technical endeavor. So, to prepare the way for necessary changes in staffing, training, and infrastructure, the most pressing challenge for data curation is leadership.','Munoz - Question 5','The biggest issues facing data curation now relate to the challenges of managing change. More than specifics of technology, infrastructure, staffing, or training, there is a general problem of how to transition organizations, work roles, and resource allocations from old configurations to new ones. Curating data requires supporting information work alongside other research tasks, from the inception of research projects to the (re)use of research products in the future.','publish','open','open','','munoz-question-5','','','2013-06-22 04:35:38','2013-06-22 04:35:38','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4640',0,'post','',0),(4641,3,'2013-06-15 21:50:32','2013-06-15 21:50:32','','Munoz - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4640-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:50:32','2013-06-15 21:50:32','',4640,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4640-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4639,3,'2013-06-15 21:49:30','2013-06-15 21:49:30','Preparing the lectures for an introductory training course on data curation for humanists led to my most enlightening moment so far. In trying to explain the role of social factors in supporting preservation and the re-use of data, I started to see more points of convergence between data curation and work on “crowdsourcing” and closely related ideas of public humanities. This convergence is an effect of the changed information environment for “scholarly” data. Specifically, library and information science (LIS) represent a body of theory and practice on connecting users with information ((Carole L. Palmer, Allen H. Renear, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data,” December 2, 2008, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764</a>.)). New LIS research on questions of data “value,” which is closely tied to re-use and thus preservation, draws on this older tradition of service to user communities, to develop a thesis that “highly valuable research data are anti-fragile; they are capable of not just persisting over time but actually gaining in value as they are stressed via application to new settings, used in diverse contexts, and transferred amongst a network of systems.” ((Nicholas M. Weber, Karen S. Baker, Andrea K. Thomer, Tiffany C. Chao, and Carole L. Palmer. “Value and Context in Data Use: Domain Analysis Revisited,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 49, no. 1 (2012): 1–10. doi:10.1002/meet.14504901168.)) Attention is a crucial factor in the survival of any particular dataset. The current configuration of Internet technologies has lowered the barrier to the loosely coordinated publishing of information to platforms (like Wikipedia), and these now concentrate an immense amount of attention (due in part to the market dominance of Google’s particular search engine technology). Thus, my moment of enlightenment came from realizing that data curators should be asking what public, web-based resources need to be curated alongside “local” data in order to increase the integration of a research project with a larger information network, which is a public good or a “commons.” Curation of one’s own data might well mean working on someone else’s data—for example, by improving the coverage of women’s history in Wikipedia, ((Mia Ridge, “New Challenges in Digital History: Sharing Women’s History on Wikipedia - My Talk Notes,” <i>Open Objects</i>, March 23, 2013, <a href=\"http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html\">http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html</a>.)) which serves as a source, via things like DBpedia, for identifiers to be used in the “linked data cloud”.\n\nThe digital humanities exist at the intersection of computational technologies with the theories, practices, and research questions of the humanities. Digital humanists have been publishing scholarship to “the Web” since its inception (as documented through crucial early projects like <i>Voice of the Shuttle </i>[link to: <a href=\"http://vos.ucsb.edu/\">http://vos.ucsb.edu/</a>]). The persistence of interest on the part of digital humanists to put more of certain kinds of humanities scholarship into “public” spaces is supported by numerous examples. The enthusiam for both using and providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to digitized collections, and in creating additions to massively popular publishing software such as WordPress for scholarly purposes, demonstrates this. In other words, the digital humanities engage with “the Web” for scholarly communication, advocacy, etc., but this engagement also has important curatorial and preservation consequences. Palmer, Renear, and Cragin envision that data curators “will build and maintain not only digital libraries and curated data sets, but also the associated indexing systems, metadata standards, ontologies, and retrieval systems.”<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn4\"><sup><sup>[iv]</sup></sup></a> I would argue that these indexing systems and ontologies include open, web-based resources like Wikipedia (or maybe structured data resources derived from Wikipedia.)<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn5\"><sup><sup>[v]</sup></sup></a> Wikipedia is the quintessential “crowdsourced” project and its use as a shared data resource suggests that data curation needs will push scholars and librarians further toward participating in a public information sphere on the web as a way to support local datasets.\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\n\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" />\n\n<div>\n\nPalmer, Renear, and Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data.”\n\n</div>\n<div>\n\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref5\"><sup><sup>[v]</sup></sup></a> For example, http://www.freebase.com/.\n\n</div>\n</div>','Munoz - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4638-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:49:30','2013-06-15 21:49:30','',4638,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4638-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4642,3,'2013-06-15 21:52:15','2013-06-15 21:52:15','The biggest issues facing data curation now relate to the challenges of managing change. More than specifics of technology, infrastructure, staffing, or training, there is a general problem of how to transition organizations, work roles, and resource allocations from old configurations to new ones. Curating data requires supporting information work alongside other research tasks, from the inception of research projects to the (re)use of research products in the future. Does the model of liaison librarians attached to (often several) departments support the intensive work that this might require? Does the IT staff that colleges currently provide to faculty support this work? These are open questions. With the pressures for change in the technology and funding environments, we must be willing to look for new solutions in the prevailingly conservative atmosphere of the academy. Data curation will have to be addressed in tandem with other challenges, such as open access to research outcomes and a holistic critique of the conditions of labor in academia, exactly because data curation is a social as well as technical endeavor. So, to prepare the way for necessary changes in staffing, training, and infrastructure, the most pressing challenge for data curation is leadership.','Munoz - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4640-autosave','','','2013-06-15 21:52:15','2013-06-15 21:52:15','',4640,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4640-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4643,3,'2013-06-15 21:56:34','2013-06-15 21:56:34','How is data curation a part of your job?','Data Curation - Question 1','','publish','open','open','','data-curation-question-1','','','2013-07-09 01:57:44','2013-07-09 01:57:44','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4643',0,'post','',0),(4644,3,'2013-06-15 21:53:54','2013-06-15 21:53:54','','Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4643-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:53:54','2013-06-15 21:53:54','',4643,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4643-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4645,3,'2013-06-15 21:56:01','2013-06-15 21:56:01','How is data curation a part of your job?','Data Curation - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4643-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:56:01','2013-06-15 21:56:01','',4643,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4643-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4646,3,'2013-06-15 21:58:44','2013-06-15 21:58:44','In your role, are the main pressures on and needs of data curation the same across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities?','Data Curation - Question 2','','publish','open','open','','data-curation-question-2','','','2013-07-09 01:57:38','2013-07-09 01:57:38','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4646',0,'post','',0),(4647,3,'2013-06-15 21:58:18','2013-06-15 21:58:18','In your role, are the main pressures on and needs of data curation the same across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities?','Data Curation - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4646-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:58:18','2013-06-15 21:58:18','',4646,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4646-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4648,3,'2013-06-15 21:29:25','2013-06-15 21:29:25','I think the biggest issue is us, people. We are capable of building sophisticated tools and infrastructures, but because data curation is a collective enterprise and a long-term dynamic system, we constantly need to negotiate our goals, needs, values, and attitudes. There are many social, political, and historical reasons for data curation to fail or succeed. We need to be aware of that.\r\n\r\nMy view on the biggest issue facing data curation is aligned with insights from the history and sociology of science. Many publications have expressed this view, but Edwards, Jackson, Bowker, and Knobel’s report on challenges regarding infrastructures is probably most relevant to the issue of data stewardship ((Paul N. Edwards, Steven J Jackson, Geoffrey C Bowker, and Cory P Knobel, “Report of a Workshop on ‘History &amp; Theory of Infrastructure : Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures’ January 2007,” <i>Design</i> 20 (January 2007): 1-50, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353\">http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353</a>.)). It is also more useful and interesting to consider not just data, but a broader range of products, or what Bechhover et al. call “research objects,” such as publications, data, code and algorithms, workflows, and so on ((Sean Bechhofer, David De Roure, Matthew Gamble, Carole Goble, and Iain Buchan, “Research Objects: Towards Exchange and Reuse of Digital Knowledge,” <i>Nature Proceedings</i> (2010), <a href=\"http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/\">http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/</a>.)).\r\n\r\nAs a complex system, research-object curation involves tensions, such as those between immediate and long-term goals of development, between global and local implementations, and between planned versus emergent changes in the system. To negotiate these, the system needs actors in different roles, including technical experts, managers, and “champions” who stimulate interest and promote adoption. During systemic growth, users and user communities can become critical to success or failure.\r\n\r\nData curation is embedded in social and institutional practices and norms, none of which change more slowly than communication and data-processing technologies. These discontinuities may be part of the reason why culture of sharing and making data public has not been widely adopted, and they may also become obstacles in creating such a culture in the future. As people, practices, and norms play a formative role in data curation, it is important to remember that there are always “winners” and “losers.” Some people initiate and adopt innovation and change, while others resist it and find it hard to fit in. To quote Edwards et al., “It is also possible that a tech-centered approach to the challenge of data sharing inclines us toward failure from the beginning, because it leaves untouched underlying questions of incentives, organization, and culture that have in fact <i>always </i>structured the nature and viability of distributed scientific work\" ((Edwards et al, “Report of a Workshop,” 32.)).\r\n\r\nPaths to solutions that Edwards et al. hint at include historical and sociological awareness; the consolidation of local systems and tools; the development of bridges and gateways, as well as boundary workers who can act as “bridge-builders” and “translators”; and more flexibility and collaboration. The question that data curators need to ask themselves is, “Are we playing a role in any of these?”','Kouper - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4609-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:29:25','2013-06-15 21:29:25','',4609,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4609-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4649,3,'2013-06-15 21:29:46','2013-06-15 21:29:46','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.\r\n\r\nI value the diversity of opportunities that my work gives me. At the same time, it is hard to act on different opportunities and go outside of academic circles. So far I have been working mostly with researchers, other data curators, and managers at research institutions. I am looking forward to engaging more with the second group of data users that I mentioned above—those who benefit from data availability but do not necessarily collect or disseminate data. I am interested in such projects as citizen science or participatory data stewardship, but I recently realized that such projects may take more planning, time, energy, and so on.\r\n\r\nI had only a few preliminary encounters with non-academic data users, but as I try to get more information about possible ways of engagement, it is very interesting to see how channels and modes of communication as well as perspectives on data may differ. For example, I recently had a conversation with an executive director of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners ESIP (http://www.esipfed.org/) about the importance of sharing earth science data with users such as police offices, disaster management forces, and so on. She had a great idea of organizing an event within the ESIP annual meeting, where such users would come and work together on a shared set of data, using scenarios or something else. Possible outcomes could be a framework, a set of requirements, or even infrastructure modules that would help to use earth science data in non-research contexts. As we discussed this possible project, I realized that most of the existing recommendations of how to engage users in data stewardship are for working with researchers and addressing their needs. We need to address the needs of other user groups so that they become agents in data stewardship as well. One interesting example of that sort of project is a recent data management guide for citizen scientists ((DataONE Public Participation in Scientific Research Working Group, “Data Management Guide for Citizen Scientists,” February, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf\">http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf</a>.)).','Kouper - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4607-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:29:46','2013-06-15 21:29:46','',4607,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4607-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4650,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:01','2013-06-15 21:30:01','This question can apply to two groups: those who are involved in data collection, analysis, or storage, but who do not see curation as one of their primary activities (researchers, students, or librarians); or those who benefit from data availability, but who use it primarily to make decisions in their non-data-oriented work (administrators, policy makers, or the larger public).\r\n\r\nThe former group works with data at the earlier stages of the data life cycle. Curation is important for them because of the changes in the system and the relative value of epistemic products. We curate, or take care of, epistemic products and objects, such as publications or material samples, because they are valuable to the research community over time. Data are a crucial component of reproducible and trustworthy research, and when they are reused in other research they minimize the cost of data collection. Therefore, it is important to curate data at the earlier stages of the research life cycle if we want rigor and accountability in research. In this sense, data curation is just another component of the collective enterprise called science that builds upon prior work and constructs knowledge by testing, proving, and falsifying hypotheses and theories.\r\n\r\nHaving said that, I think that we still have a long way to go to recognize the collective value of research data. In many areas of inquiry, data are still rather private, intended for internal use not public communication. Patterns of private use are usually different from those of public use. We may pile up books and magazines in our bedroom, but we would probably put some thought into arranging them in the living room and probably make sure they fit with the overall décor. If we keep thinking about data as something for private use and try to curate them afterwards, we will always end up with “piles” that require a lot of effort to organize and incorporate into the overall ecology of research products. Such data will always be difficult to discover and use. That is why we need to find ways to make data open for public use and discussion; mandates from funding agencies are not sufficient in this regard.\r\n\r\nFor the latter group of decision makers and the public, the argument for data curation is similar to the argument about the importance of science: Having well-preserved data that are easy to discover and work with helps us join efforts and better explain and understand the world, which ultimately improves our lives and our future.','Kouper - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4605-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:30:01','2013-06-15 21:30:01','',4605,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4605-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4651,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:08','2013-06-15 21:30:08','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\r\n\r\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\r\n\r\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\r\n\r\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)). Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, <a href=\"http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html\">http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html</a>.)).\r\n\r\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\r\n\r\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world ((NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html\">http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html</a>.)). No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\r\n\r\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.','Kouper - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4603-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:30:08','2013-06-15 21:30:08','',4603,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4603-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4652,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:14','2013-06-15 21:30:14','Three factors shape my perspective on data curation: my research interest in the changes in knowledge production over time and across domains; the goals of my CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship; and the mission and activities of the research center where I work, the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu\">Data to Insight Center</a> (D2I) at Indiana University Bloomington.\r\n\r\nAs a data curation fellow at D2I, I help develop tools and best practices for data management, sharing, and preservation; I conduct research in the areas of data analytics and stewardship as well as digital humanities and digital libraries; and I advance data curation as both an important component of science and as a professional activity.\r\n\r\nMy primary involvement is with the <a href=\"http://sead-data.net\">Sustainable Environment, Actionable Data</a> (SEAD) project. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded SEAD to create national and global data research infrastructure via the program “Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet).” SEAD is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that works to develop a digital environment that will support data curation and management workflows in sustainability science. D2I is developing Virtual Archive, a solution that provides federated deposit and access capabilities across multiple institutional repositories. A researcher or data curator can use Virtual Archive to automatically deposit data in one of the partner repositories or to search across those repositories and find the data that they need.\r\n\r\nFor SEAD Virtual Archive, I co-lead architectural, policy, and user-engagement activities and solutions. For example, I use my metadata and information organization expertise to improve the Virtual Archive data model and interface to support the dual needs of researchers and data curators. Currently, we are working on identifying layers of semantic information, such as the relationships between different data types within a dataset or the possible uses of data, which can help to describe heterogeneous or multi-variable datasets in sustainability science. I also use my expertise in social theory and the sociology of knowledge to identify barriers in data sharing and find suitable approaches to data sharing and preservation in relevant SEAD disciplines, such as ecology or hydrology.\r\n\r\nI am also involved in the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu/hathitrust-research-center\">HathiTrust Research Center</a> (HTRC) project. This project develops cyberinfrastructure to support the digital humanities in their work with massive amounts of texts derived from the HathiTrust Digital Library. My role in this project is primarily concerned with engagement and community development. If we want this project to succeed, it is crucial to let the community know about this environment and its capabilities, gather feedback so that we can continue improving it, and perhaps learn together about innovative research opportunities in text computations.\r\n\r\nEngagement and outreach are crucial for my data curation work. Many efforts to facilitate data sharing and preservation exist, yet it is still a relatively new component of scholarship and research. I work to help articulate the value of sharing and preserving data to research communities and to create opportunities to do so. We often talk about how important it is to ground our data tools in actual use cases, so I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to connect to researchers and their data practices, how to find “data champions,” and how to create a framework to engage researchers in data exchanges. The latter is the focus of my efforts as an active member of the new global initiative called Research Data Alliance (RDA) (http://rd-alliance.org), within which I, along with others, formed an engagement interest group. We had a successful planning meeting during the RDA plenary in March, and about 26 data practitioners and scientists attended. We shared many interesting ideas, such as creating a library of best practices and solutions. Our group is still in the early stages of development and we invite all who are interested to join ((RDA-Engage forum thread can found <a href=\"http://forum.rd-alliance.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=26\">here</a>; to subscribe to the RDA-Engage mailing list visit <a href=\"http://lists.lists.rd-alliance.org/mailman/listinfo/rda-cwg-engage\">here</a>)).\r\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\r\n</div>','Kouper - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4601-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:30:14','2013-06-15 21:30:14','',4601,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4601-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4653,3,'2013-06-15 22:01:35','2013-06-15 22:01:35','Why is data curation important to non-data curators?','Data Curation - Question 3','','publish','open','open','','data-curation-question-3','','','2013-06-15 22:01:35','2013-06-15 22:01:35','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4653',0,'post','',0),(4654,3,'2013-06-15 22:00:09','2013-06-15 22:00:09','','Data Curation - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4653-revision','','','2013-06-15 22:00:09','2013-06-15 22:00:09','',4653,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4653-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4655,3,'2013-06-15 22:02:38','2013-06-15 22:02:38','What has been your most enlightening moment in your work with data curation?','Data Curation - Question 4','','publish','open','open','','data-curation-question-4','','','2013-07-09 01:57:31','2013-07-09 01:57:31','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4655',0,'post','',0),(4656,3,'2013-06-15 22:01:57','2013-06-15 22:01:57','','Data Curation - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4655-revision','','','2013-06-15 22:01:57','2013-06-15 22:01:57','',4655,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4655-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4657,3,'2013-06-15 22:03:26','2013-06-15 22:03:26','What is the biggest issue facing data curation now: technology, infrastructure, staffing, training, or something else?','Data Curation - Question 5','','publish','open','open','','data-curation-question-5','','','2013-06-15 22:03:26','2013-06-15 22:03:26','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4657',0,'post','',0),(4658,3,'2013-06-15 22:02:53','2013-06-15 22:02:53','','Data Curation - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4657-revision','','','2013-06-15 22:02:53','2013-06-15 22:02:53','',4657,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4657-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4659,3,'2013-06-15 22:04:30','2013-06-15 22:04:30','What is the biggest issue facing data curation now: technology, infrastructure, staffing, training, or something else?','Data Curation - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4657-autosave','','','2013-06-15 22:04:30','2013-06-15 22:04:30','',4657,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4657-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4660,3,'2013-06-15 21:33:24','2013-06-15 21:33:24','As Digital Archivist, my main responsibilities and most immediate priorities concern the management of born-digital materials acquired in archival collections. Over the past year, I have focused on building a foundation of policies, procedures, and workflows to guide the process of acquiring digital materials from donors and establishing initial administrative, physical, and intellectual control over these materials. I have drawn from the final report of the AIMS - Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship project, ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, accessed January 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf</a>.)) which has come up with a framework to assist current practitioners in designing and implementing policies and workflows to acquire, process, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials. I have created local implementations of the methods and documents outlined in the AIMS report, including a donor survey instrument to collect important contextual information during the acquisition process. I have also implemented digital forensics hardware and software tools to help maintain the authenticity and integrity of digital materials when transferring them from the donor to the archives.\r\n\r\nAnother resource I have used to guide my work is the Digital Curation Centre’s Curation Lifecycle Model, which is a visual representation of a “high level overview of the stages required for successful curation and preservation of data from initial conceptualisation through the iterative curation cycle((“What is the Digital Curation Lifecycle Model,” Digital Curation Centre, accessed February 12, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model\">http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model</a>.)).” In relation to actions within the Curation Lifecycle Model, most of my recent data curation activities fall within creating or receiving data, appraising and selecting data, ingesting data, and preserving data. The conceptual framework articulated in this model has informed my workflow design activities, where I have attempted to ensure that discrete actions are logically integrated into an overall comprehensive system for managing born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nWhile my main focus has been on the curation of born-digital materials within hybrid archival collections, this is a foundational element of a comprehensive program to guide the long-term preservation and access to all the digital content that the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library produces and acquires. As Digital Archivist in a medium-sized academic library, I am in an excellent position to lead a collaborative effort to develop and implement a sustainable digital preservation program. Having established policies, procedures, and workflows within the Archives and Special Collections department, in the coming months I will be shifting my data curation activities towards organization-wide tasks. These activities will include the development and implementation of a digital preservation policy framework and technological infrastructure to support ongoing preservation and access services.\r\n\r\nIn my particular organizational context, I am the champion for ensuring that preservation actions are integrated into the workflows of the multiple content streams that are currently part of Library services. This includes helping to revise our digitization workflows and policies to ensure that digital objects are created according to standards and best practices and incorporating the capture and management of metadata needed to ensure current and future access. In addition, I am participating in the development of a Library-managed institutional repository service, a new direction and new content stream for the Library. In a similar manner, my contribution to this project involves ensuring that the preservation and access needs of users are integrated into the design and functions of the hardware and software that underlies this new service.','Meister - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4621-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:33:24','2013-06-15 21:33:24','',4621,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4621-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4662,3,'2013-06-15 22:08:13','2013-06-15 22:08:13','As Digital Archivist, my main responsibilities and most immediate priorities concern the management of born-digital materials acquired in archival collections. Over the past year, I have focused on building a foundation of policies, procedures, and workflows to guide the process of acquiring digital materials from donors and establishing initial administrative, physical, and intellectual control over these materials. I have drawn from the final report of the AIMS - Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship project, ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, accessed January 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf</a>.)) which has come up with a framework to assist current practitioners in designing and implementing policies and workflows to acquire, process, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials. I have created local implementations of the methods and documents outlined in the AIMS report, including a donor survey instrument to collect important contextual information during the acquisition process. I have also implemented digital forensics hardware and software tools to help maintain the authenticity and integrity of digital materials when transferring them from the donor to the archives.\r\n\r\nAnother resource I have used to guide my work is the Digital Curation Centre’s Curation Lifecycle Model, which is a visual representation of a “high level overview of the stages required for successful curation and preservation of data from initial conceptualisation through the iterative curation cycle.\" ((“What is the Digital Curation Lifecycle Model,” Digital Curation Centre, accessed February 12, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model\">http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model</a>.)) In relation to actions within the Curation Lifecycle Model, most of my recent data curation activities fall within creating or receiving data, appraising and selecting data, ingesting data, and preserving data. The conceptual framework articulated in this model has informed my workflow design activities, where I have attempted to ensure that discrete actions are logically integrated into an overall comprehensive system for managing born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nWhile my main focus has been on the curation of born-digital materials within hybrid archival collections, this is a foundational element of a comprehensive program to guide the long-term preservation and access to all the digital content that the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library produces and acquires. As Digital Archivist in a medium-sized academic library, I am in an excellent position to lead a collaborative effort to develop and implement a sustainable digital preservation program. Having established policies, procedures, and workflows within the Archives and Special Collections department, in the coming months I will be shifting my data curation activities towards organization-wide tasks. These activities will include the development and implementation of a digital preservation policy framework and technological infrastructure to support ongoing preservation and access services.\r\n\r\nIn my particular organizational context, I am the champion for ensuring that preservation actions are integrated into the workflows of the multiple content streams that are currently part of Library services. This includes helping to revise our digitization workflows and policies to ensure that digital objects are created according to standards and best practices and incorporating the capture and management of metadata needed to ensure current and future access. In addition, I am participating in the development of a Library-managed institutional repository service, a new direction and new content stream for the Library. In a similar manner, my contribution to this project involves ensuring that the preservation and access needs of users are integrated into the design and functions of the hardware and software that underlies this new service.','Meister - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4621-revision-4','','','2013-06-15 22:08:13','2013-06-15 22:08:13','',4621,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4621-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4661,3,'2013-06-15 22:07:30','2013-06-15 22:07:30','As Digital Archivist, my main responsibilities and most immediate priorities concern the management of born-digital materials acquired in archival collections. Over the past year, I have focused on building a foundation of policies, procedures, and workflows to guide the process of acquiring digital materials from donors and establishing initial administrative, physical, and intellectual control over these materials. I have drawn from the final report of the AIMS - Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship project, ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, accessed January 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf</a>.)) which has come up with a framework to assist current practitioners in designing and implementing policies and workflows to acquire, process, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials. I have created local implementations of the methods and documents outlined in the AIMS report, including a donor survey instrument to collect important contextual information during the acquisition process. I have also implemented digital forensics hardware and software tools to help maintain the authenticity and integrity of digital materials when transferring them from the donor to the archives.\r\n\r\nAnother resource I have used to guide my work is the Digital Curation Centre’s Curation Lifecycle Model, which is a visual representation of a “high level overview of the stages required for successful curation and preservation of data from initial conceptualisation through the iterative curation cycle ((“What is the Digital Curation Lifecycle Model,” Digital Curation Centre, accessed February 12, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model\">http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model</a>.)).” In relation to actions within the Curation Lifecycle Model, most of my recent data curation activities fall within creating or receiving data, appraising and selecting data, ingesting data, and preserving data. The conceptual framework articulated in this model has informed my workflow design activities, where I have attempted to ensure that discrete actions are logically integrated into an overall comprehensive system for managing born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nWhile my main focus has been on the curation of born-digital materials within hybrid archival collections, this is a foundational element of a comprehensive program to guide the long-term preservation and access to all the digital content that the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library produces and acquires. As Digital Archivist in a medium-sized academic library, I am in an excellent position to lead a collaborative effort to develop and implement a sustainable digital preservation program. Having established policies, procedures, and workflows within the Archives and Special Collections department, in the coming months I will be shifting my data curation activities towards organization-wide tasks. These activities will include the development and implementation of a digital preservation policy framework and technological infrastructure to support ongoing preservation and access services.\r\n\r\nIn my particular organizational context, I am the champion for ensuring that preservation actions are integrated into the workflows of the multiple content streams that are currently part of Library services. This includes helping to revise our digitization workflows and policies to ensure that digital objects are created according to standards and best practices and incorporating the capture and management of metadata needed to ensure current and future access. In addition, I am participating in the development of a Library-managed institutional repository service, a new direction and new content stream for the Library. In a similar manner, my contribution to this project involves ensuring that the preservation and access needs of users are integrated into the design and functions of the hardware and software that underlies this new service.','Meister - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4621-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 22:07:30','2013-06-15 22:07:30','',4621,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4621-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4663,3,'2013-06-15 21:34:26','2013-06-15 21:34:26','In our university community context, the colleges and departments within the sciences often have established data management practices, including utilizing national discipline-specific data repositories to manage and share data. In contrast, those working in the social sciences and humanities often have limited resources to put towards data curation needs. For these disciplines in particular, the Library has an excellent opportunity to play an important role as a data curation and preservation service provider.\r\n\r\nMuch of my knowledge and understanding on the data curation needs of different disciplines within my specific institutional setting have come from my role in the development of a library-managed institutional repository service. During this development process my colleagues and I have worked to collect information on the faculty, student, and staff interest in, and specific needs related to, a potential institutional repository service. Through a survey of liaison librarians and a series of meetings with key administrative stakeholders from university colleges and schools, we have collected valuable information on current institutional needs, including specific data curation needs. While informal, this information has provided an initial sense of the needs of our particular university community.\r\n\r\nThe initial focus of our institutional repository service will likely be on increasing access to intellectual outputs, but there is strong potential to provide additional assistance and guidance during earlier stages of the research and creative process. Our information gathering highlighted that data curation needs may also be different across faculty, graduate, and undergraduate groups. For example, in our case, there is strong interest in an institutional repository service from a humanities unit, the School of Media Arts, as a platform for showcasing and increasing access to undergraduate student work. During initial conversations, faculty members from this department articulated a desire to maintain access to undergraduate work both for internal teaching needs and to give it more exposure to media-arts industry audiences. The library can help provide ongoing sustainable access by ensuring the long-term preservation of these materials through our institutional repository service. The next steps are to increase the participation of various groups and disciplines in the development of this institutional repository service to ensure that it meets their particular data curation needs.','Meister - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4623-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:34:26','2013-06-15 21:34:26','',4623,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4623-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4664,3,'2013-06-15 22:09:44','2013-06-15 22:09:44','As Digital Archivist, my main responsibilities and most immediate priorities concern the management of born-digital materials acquired in archival collections. Over the past year, I have focused on building a foundation of policies, procedures, and workflows to guide the process of acquiring digital materials from donors and establishing initial administrative, physical, and intellectual control over these materials. I have drawn from the final report of the AIMS - Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship project, ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, accessed January 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf</a>.)) which has come up with a framework to assist current practitioners in designing and implementing policies and workflows to acquire, process, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials. I have created local implementations of the methods and documents outlined in the AIMS report, including a donor survey instrument to collect important contextual information during the acquisition process. I have also implemented digital forensics hardware and software tools to help maintain the authenticity and integrity of digital materials when transferring them from the donor to the archives.\r\n\r\nAnother resource I have used to guide my work is the Digital Curation Centre’s Curation Lifecycle Model, which is a visual representation of a “high level overview of the stages required for successful curation and preservation of data from initial conceptualisation through the iterative curation cycle.\" ((“What is the Digital Curation Lifecycle Model,” Digital Curation Centre, accessed February 12, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model\">http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model</a>.)) In relation to actions within the Curation Lifecycle Model, most of my recent data curation activities fall within creating or receiving data, appraising and selecting data, ingesting data, and preserving data. The conceptual framework articulated in this model has informed my workflow design activities, where I have attempted to ensure that discrete actions are logically integrated into an overall comprehensive system for managing born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nWhile my main focus has been on the curation of born-digital materials within hybrid archival collections, this is a foundational element of a comprehensive program to guide the long-term preservation and access to all the digital content that the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library produces and acquires. As Digital Archivist in a medium-sized academic library, I am in an excellent position to lead a collaborative effort to develop and implement a sustainable digital preservation program. Having established policies, procedures, and workflows within the Archives and Special Collections department, in the coming months I will be shifting my data curation activities towards organization-wide tasks. These activities will include the development and implementation of a digital preservation policy framework and technological infrastructure to support ongoing preservation and access services.\r\n\r\nIn my particular organizational context, I am the champion for ensuring that preservation actions are integrated into the workflows of the multiple content streams that are currently part of Library services. This includes helping to revise our digitization workflows and policies to ensure that digital objects are created according to standards and best practices and incorporating the capture and management of metadata needed to ensure current and future access. In addition, I am participating in the development of a Library-managed institutional repository service, a new direction and new content stream for the Library. In a similar manner, my contribution to this project involves ensuring that the preservation and access needs of users are integrated into the design and functions of the hardware and software that underlies this new service.','Meister - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4621-revision-5','','','2013-06-15 22:09:44','2013-06-15 22:09:44','',4621,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4621-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4665,3,'2013-06-15 21:35:52','2013-06-15 21:35:52','Data curation is important to non-data curators because they do not want to have to spend time thinking about data curation. Data creators and users want to focus on creating and using data, engaging in research, and producing knowledge. Data curation is a means to an end for most creators and users, and it functions best if it requires as little effort as possible on their part. While they may not be interested in the details, a data curation service can provide valuable benefits to non-data curators, including:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Ensuring the authenticity and integrity of data</li>\r\n	<li>Assistance with grant funding for data management requirements</li>\r\n	<li>Increased access and distribution of data</li>\r\n	<li>Increased opportunities for new uses</li>\r\n	<li>Increased visibility of research through data citation</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nBeyond the sphere of the individual creator and researcher, data curation has important applications at the organization or institutional level. In a university context, many fundamental business functions rely on the creation of, management of, and access to data assets. The principles of data curation have a direct application at the organizational level, especially in relation to maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the data. As most university business functions are built into enterprise-level systems, data curators have an important role to play in providing guidance on the types of system functionality needed to provide both near-term and potentially long-term access to data assets. The terminology and approach of data curation may not be familiar to non-data curators, potentially necessitating an outreach and education strategy. A good communication strategy to educate and inform non-data curators includes a balance of the benefits of integrating the data curation perspective and the potential risks of not incorporating this approach into enterprise-level system development.','Meister - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4625-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:35:52','2013-06-15 21:35:52','',4625,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4625-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4666,3,'2013-06-15 22:16:53','2013-06-15 22:16:53','Data curation is important to non-data curators because they do not want to have to spend time thinking about data curation. Data creators and users want to focus on creating and using data, engaging in research, and producing knowledge. Data curation is a means to an end for most creators and users, and it functions best if it requires as little effort as possible on their part. While they may not be interested in the details, a data curation service can provide valuable benefits to non-data curators, including:\r\n<ul>	<li>Ensuring the authenticity and integrity of data</li>\r\n	<li>Assistance with grant funding for data management requirements</li>\r\n	<li>Increased access and distribution of data</li>\r\n	<li>Increased opportunities for new uses</li>\r\n	<li>Increased visibility of research through data citation</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nBeyond the sphere of the individual creator and researcher, data curation has important applications at the organization or institutional level. In a university context, many fundamental business functions rely on the creation of, management of, and access to data assets. The principles of data curation have a direct application at the organizational level, especially in relation to maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the data. As most university business functions are built into enterprise-level systems, data curators have an important role to play in providing guidance on the types of system functionality needed to provide both near-term and potentially long-term access to data assets. The terminology and approach of data curation may not be familiar to non-data curators, potentially necessitating an outreach and education strategy. A good communication strategy to educate and inform non-data curators includes a balance of the benefits of integrating the data curation perspective and the potential risks of not incorporating this approach into enterprise-level system development.','Meister - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4625-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 22:16:53','2013-06-15 22:16:53','',4625,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4625-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4667,3,'2013-06-15 22:18:08','2013-06-15 22:18:08','Data curation is important to non-data curators because they do not want to have to spend time thinking about data curation. Data creators and users want to focus on creating and using data, engaging in research, and producing knowledge. Data curation is a means to an end for most creators and users, and it functions best if it requires as little effort as possible on their part. While they may not be interested in the details, a data curation service can provide valuable benefits to non-data curators, including:\r\n<ul><li>Ensuring the authenticity and integrity of data</li>\r\n	<li>Assistance with grant funding for data management requirements</li>\r\n	<li>Increased access and distribution of data</li>\r\n	<li>Increased opportunities for new uses</li>\r\n	<li>Increased visibility of research through data citation</li></ul>\r\nBeyond the sphere of the individual creator and researcher, data curation has important applications at the organization or institutional level. In a university context, many fundamental business functions rely on the creation of, management of, and access to data assets. The principles of data curation have a direct application at the organizational level, especially in relation to maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the data. As most university business functions are built into enterprise-level systems, data curators have an important role to play in providing guidance on the types of system functionality needed to provide both near-term and potentially long-term access to data assets. The terminology and approach of data curation may not be familiar to non-data curators, potentially necessitating an outreach and education strategy. A good communication strategy to educate and inform non-data curators includes a balance of the benefits of integrating the data curation perspective and the potential risks of not incorporating this approach into enterprise-level system development.','Meister - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4625-revision-4','','','2013-06-15 22:18:08','2013-06-15 22:18:08','',4625,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4625-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4668,3,'2013-06-15 22:19:08','2013-06-15 22:19:08','Data curation is important to non-data curators because they do not want to have to spend time thinking about data curation. Data creators and users want to focus on creating and using data, engaging in research, and producing knowledge. Data curation is a means to an end for most creators and users, and it functions best if it requires as little effort as possible on their part. While they may not be interested in the details, a data curation service can provide valuable benefits to non-data curators, including:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Ensuring the authenticity and integrity of data</li>\r\n	<li>Assistance with grant funding for data management requirements</li>\r\n	<li>Increased access and distribution of data</li>\r\n	<li>Increased opportunities for new uses</li>\r\n	<li>Increased visibility of research through data citation</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nBeyond the sphere of the individual creator and researcher, data curation has important applications at the organization or institutional level. In a university context, many fundamental business functions rely on the creation of, management of, and access to data assets. The principles of data curation have a direct application at the organizational level, especially in relation to maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the data. As most university business functions are built into enterprise-level systems, data curators have an important role to play in providing guidance on the types of system functionality needed to provide both near-term and potentially long-term access to data assets. The terminology and approach of data curation may not be familiar to non-data curators, potentially necessitating an outreach and education strategy. A good communication strategy to educate and inform non-data curators includes a balance of the benefits of integrating the data curation perspective and the potential risks of not incorporating this approach into enterprise-level system development.','Meister - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4625-revision-5','','','2013-06-15 22:19:08','2013-06-15 22:19:08','',4625,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4625-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(4669,3,'2013-06-15 21:36:47','2013-06-15 21:36:47','To date, some of my most enlightening moments have been working with and learning from data creators, a process that I hope to expand in the future. A recent series of interactions with a creator who donated a collection of architectural drawings illustrates the types of valuable information that may be exchanged during such meetings. In this case, the Library had already acquired a set of paper drawings, and we were considering the acquisition of a set of AutoCAD drawing files from the same donor. Compared to the range of file formats within our existing collections, AutoCAD files represented a significantly new endeavor in relation to the inherent complexity of these digital objects and preservation concerns due to the proprietary nature of the file format itself.\r\n\r\nI met with the donor to collect additional information to assist in determining the feasibility of acquiring these materials. Conducting an in-person meeting with the donor provided an opportunity to field test our local donor survey instrument to obtain valuable contextual details about the materials, including the creation process, file management procedures, rights and intellectual property concerns, and access requirements. More a dialogue than an interview, the donor meeting also included discussion of, and valuable insight into, the potential access needs of future users of the materials. As an architect who both created and used AutoCAD files on a regular basis, the donor articulated the specific elements of the drawing files that would likely be important for future users, whether undergraduate students or architects seeking to understand the technical details of a building as part of a renovation project. Capturing the donor’s perspective on contextual details and access needs has proved to be highly valuable, informing both the feasibility assessment and preservation strategy for these specific materials. Through our collaboration with the donor, we have developed an initial preservation strategy of migrating the files to PDF/E, an emerging international standard. This strategy will mitigate the issue of the proprietary nature of the native AutoCAD format by converting these files to an open preservation format. Alongside this migration strategy we will also explore the feasibility of an emulation preservation strategy to provide access to the native AutoCAD files.\r\n\r\nThis example of a creator and archivist interaction demonstrates the value that both perspectives bring to the data curation process. Creators have a unique understanding of the research and creation process that results in new data, the type of descriptive information needed to understand that data, and the potential access needs related to and uses of that data. Archivists appreciate and understand the importance of capturing contextual information to ensure that data is made accessible in a form that is meaningful and understandable to both current and future users. The umbrella of data curation provides an excellent opportunity to re-frame and redefine the traditional roles of creator and archivist. Increased involvement and interactions between these entities closer to the point of creation have the potential to inform the design of tools and systems to ensure that valuable contextual information is captured throughout the data lifecycle.','Meister - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4627-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:36:47','2013-06-15 21:36:47','',4627,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4627-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4670,3,'2013-06-15 21:37:45','2013-06-15 21:37:45','From my perspective, these issues of technology, infrastructure, staffing, and training are all important issues that can directly impact data curation both within local institutional settings and more generally as a field, but I would argue that a larger cultural issue surrounds and affects all of these elements.\r\n\r\nThe skills and knowledge that data curation professionals need draw from and cut across multiple fields and disciplines. The holistic approach of data curation and its application in multiple industries and sectors challenges traditional boundaries that differentiate cultural heritage professionals. These are, in part, based on the identity of libraries, archives, and museums as institutions defined by the types of materials collected, as well as how those materials are accessed and used. Data curation as a profession represents recognition of the needs of twenty-first-century creators and users and articulates a shift away from traditional boundaries and professional identities. Many groups and individuals have encouraged this shift, but as with any kind of change, there is still hesitation to fully embrace data curation within and across cultural heritage professions.\r\n\r\nIn the United States context, the professional identity of the archivist is connected to a strong set of principles, theories, and practice. Many of the methods and concepts that make up core archival principles reflect the key skills and knowledge that data curation professionals need. Despite these similarities, the traditional notion that the archivist steps in once materials are transferred from the donor to the archives is still the norm. Even in our current moment of digital information ubiquity, this traditional understanding of the role and responsibilities of the archivist is pervasive both within and outside the profession. Data curation encompasses a broader view of the information continuum and illustrates the value of information professionals engaging with creators and users throughout this process. Data curation offers an opportunity to re-envision the role of the archivist as shifting towards a more active engagement as service provider, system designer, and/or data management consultant. To encourage this shift, the cultural heritage community needs to continue to support the development of new data curation skills and knowledge through training and professional development opportunities. In addition, we need to continue to articulate our value and relevance to our local institutions and society as a whole by moving beyond traditional boundaries and professional identities. Data curation, as a conceptual approach and new discipline, provides a framework to make increasingly blurry traditional boundaries even more permeable, a transformation that cultural heritage professionals should wholeheartedly embrace.','Meister - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4629-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:37:45','2013-06-15 21:37:45','',4629,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4629-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4671,3,'2013-06-15 21:59:52','2013-06-15 21:59:52','Three factors shape my perspective on data curation: my research interest in the changes in knowledge production over time and across domains; the goals of my CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship; and the mission and activities of the research center where I work, the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu\">Data to Insight Center</a> (D2I) at Indiana University Bloomington.\r\n\r\nAs a data curation fellow at D2I, I help develop tools and best practices for data management, sharing, and preservation; I conduct research in the areas of data analytics and stewardship as well as digital humanities and digital libraries; and I advance data curation as both an important component of science and as a professional activity.\r\n\r\nMy primary involvement is with the <a href=\"http://sead-data.net\">Sustainable Environment, Actionable Data</a> (SEAD) project. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded SEAD to create national and global data research infrastructure via the program “Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet).” SEAD is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that works to develop a digital environment that will support data curation and management workflows in sustainability science. D2I is developing Virtual Archive, a solution that provides federated deposit and access capabilities across multiple institutional repositories. A researcher or data curator can use Virtual Archive to automatically deposit data in one of the partner repositories or to search across those repositories and find the data that they need.\r\n\r\nFor SEAD Virtual Archive, I co-lead architectural, policy, and user-engagement activities and solutions. For example, I use my metadata and information organization expertise to improve the Virtual Archive data model and interface to support the dual needs of researchers and data curators. Currently, we are working on identifying layers of semantic information, such as the relationships between different data types within a dataset or the possible uses of data, which can help to describe heterogeneous or multi-variable datasets in sustainability science. I also use my expertise in social theory and the sociology of knowledge to identify barriers in data sharing and find suitable approaches to data sharing and preservation in relevant SEAD disciplines, such as ecology or hydrology.\r\n\r\nI am also involved in the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu/hathitrust-research-center\">HathiTrust Research Center</a> (HTRC) project. This project develops cyberinfrastructure to support the digital humanities in their work with massive amounts of texts derived from the HathiTrust Digital Library. My role in this project is primarily concerned with engagement and community development. If we want this project to succeed, it is crucial to let the community know about this environment and its capabilities, gather feedback so that we can continue improving it, and perhaps learn together about innovative research opportunities in text computations.\r\n\r\nEngagement and outreach are crucial for my data curation work. Many efforts to facilitate data sharing and preservation exist, yet it is still a relatively new component of scholarship and research. I work to help articulate the value of sharing and preserving data to research communities and to create opportunities to do so. We often talk about how important it is to ground our data tools in actual use cases, so I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to connect to researchers and their data practices, how to find “data champions,” and how to create a framework to engage researchers in data exchanges. The latter is the focus of my efforts as an active member of the new global initiative called Research Data Alliance (RDA) (http://rd-alliance.org), within which I, along with others, formed an engagement interest group. We had a successful planning meeting during the RDA plenary in March, and about 26 data practitioners and scientists attended. We shared many interesting ideas, such as creating a library of best practices and solutions. Our group is still in the early stages of development and we invite all who are interested to join ((RDA-Engage forum thread can found <a href=\"http://forum.rd-alliance.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=26\">here</a>; to subscribe to the RDA-Engage mailing list visit <a href=\"http://lists.lists.rd-alliance.org/mailman/listinfo/rda-cwg-engage\">here</a>)).\r\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\r\n</div>','Kouper - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4601-revision-4','','','2013-06-15 21:59:52','2013-06-15 21:59:52','',4601,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4601-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4672,3,'2013-06-15 22:25:40','2013-06-15 22:25:40','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\n\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\n\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\n\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)). Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, <a href=\"http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html\">http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html</a>.)).\n\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\n\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world. ((NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html\">http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html</a>.)) No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\n\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.','Kouper - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4603-autosave','','','2013-06-15 22:25:40','2013-06-15 22:25:40','',4603,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4603-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4673,3,'2013-06-15 21:59:45','2013-06-15 21:59:45','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\r\n\r\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\r\n\r\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\r\n\r\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)). Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, <a href=\"http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html\">http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html</a>.)).\r\n\r\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\r\n\r\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world ((NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html\">http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html</a>.)). No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\r\n\r\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.','Kouper - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4603-revision-4','','','2013-06-15 21:59:45','2013-06-15 21:59:45','',4603,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4603-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4674,3,'2013-06-15 21:59:39','2013-06-15 21:59:39','This question can apply to two groups: those who are involved in data collection, analysis, or storage, but who do not see curation as one of their primary activities (researchers, students, or librarians); or those who benefit from data availability, but who use it primarily to make decisions in their non-data-oriented work (administrators, policy makers, or the larger public).\r\n\r\nThe former group works with data at the earlier stages of the data life cycle. Curation is important for them because of the changes in the system and the relative value of epistemic products. We curate, or take care of, epistemic products and objects, such as publications or material samples, because they are valuable to the research community over time. Data are a crucial component of reproducible and trustworthy research, and when they are reused in other research they minimize the cost of data collection. Therefore, it is important to curate data at the earlier stages of the research life cycle if we want rigor and accountability in research. In this sense, data curation is just another component of the collective enterprise called science that builds upon prior work and constructs knowledge by testing, proving, and falsifying hypotheses and theories.\r\n\r\nHaving said that, I think that we still have a long way to go to recognize the collective value of research data. In many areas of inquiry, data are still rather private, intended for internal use not public communication. Patterns of private use are usually different from those of public use. We may pile up books and magazines in our bedroom, but we would probably put some thought into arranging them in the living room and probably make sure they fit with the overall décor. If we keep thinking about data as something for private use and try to curate them afterwards, we will always end up with “piles” that require a lot of effort to organize and incorporate into the overall ecology of research products. Such data will always be difficult to discover and use. That is why we need to find ways to make data open for public use and discussion; mandates from funding agencies are not sufficient in this regard.\r\n\r\nFor the latter group of decision makers and the public, the argument for data curation is similar to the argument about the importance of science: Having well-preserved data that are easy to discover and work with helps us join efforts and better explain and understand the world, which ultimately improves our lives and our future.','Kouper - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4605-revision-4','','','2013-06-15 21:59:39','2013-06-15 21:59:39','',4605,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4605-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4675,3,'2013-06-15 22:28:36','2013-06-15 22:28:36','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.\n\nI value the diversity of opportunities that my work gives me. At the same time, it is hard to act on different opportunities and go outside of academic circles. So far I have been working mostly with researchers, other data curators, and managers at research institutions. I am looking forward to engaging more with the second group of data users that I mentioned above—those who benefit from data availability but do not necessarily collect or disseminate data. I am interested in such projects as citizen science or participatory data stewardship, but I recently realized that such projects may take more planning, time, energy, and so on.\n\nI had only a few preliminary encounters with non-academic data users, but as I try to get more information about possible ways of engagement, it is very interesting to see how channels and modes of communication as well as perspectives on data may differ. For example, I recently had a conversation with an executive director of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) about the importance of sharing earth science data with users such as police offices, disaster management forces, and so on. She had a great idea of organizing an event within the ESIP annual meeting, where such users would come and work together on a shared set of data, using scenarios or something else. Possible outcomes could be a framework, a set of requirements, or even infrastructure modules that would help to use earth science data in non-research contexts. As we discussed this possible project, I realized that most of the existing recommendations of how to engage users in data stewardship are for working with researchers and addressing their needs. We need to address the needs of other user groups so that they become agents in data stewardship as well. One interesting example of that sort of project is a recent data management guide for citizen scientists. ((DataONE Public Participation in Scientific Research Working Group, “Data Management Guide for Citizen Scientists,” February, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf\">http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf</a>.))','Kouper - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4607-autosave','','','2013-06-15 22:28:36','2013-06-15 22:28:36','',4607,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4607-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4676,3,'2013-06-15 21:59:35','2013-06-15 21:59:35','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.\r\n\r\nI value the diversity of opportunities that my work gives me. At the same time, it is hard to act on different opportunities and go outside of academic circles. So far I have been working mostly with researchers, other data curators, and managers at research institutions. I am looking forward to engaging more with the second group of data users that I mentioned above—those who benefit from data availability but do not necessarily collect or disseminate data. I am interested in such projects as citizen science or participatory data stewardship, but I recently realized that such projects may take more planning, time, energy, and so on.\r\n\r\nI had only a few preliminary encounters with non-academic data users, but as I try to get more information about possible ways of engagement, it is very interesting to see how channels and modes of communication as well as perspectives on data may differ. For example, I recently had a conversation with an executive director of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners ESIP (http://www.esipfed.org/) about the importance of sharing earth science data with users such as police offices, disaster management forces, and so on. She had a great idea of organizing an event within the ESIP annual meeting, where such users would come and work together on a shared set of data, using scenarios or something else. Possible outcomes could be a framework, a set of requirements, or even infrastructure modules that would help to use earth science data in non-research contexts. As we discussed this possible project, I realized that most of the existing recommendations of how to engage users in data stewardship are for working with researchers and addressing their needs. We need to address the needs of other user groups so that they become agents in data stewardship as well. One interesting example of that sort of project is a recent data management guide for citizen scientists ((DataONE Public Participation in Scientific Research Working Group, “Data Management Guide for Citizen Scientists,” February, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf\">http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf</a>.)).','Kouper - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4607-revision-4','','','2013-06-15 21:59:35','2013-06-15 21:59:35','',4607,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4607-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4677,3,'2013-06-15 22:30:20','2013-06-15 22:30:20','I think the biggest issue is us, people. We are capable of building sophisticated tools and infrastructures, but because data curation is a collective enterprise and a long-term dynamic system, we constantly need to negotiate our goals, needs, values, and attitudes. There are many social, political, and historical reasons for data curation to fail or succeed. We need to be aware of that.\n\nMy view on the biggest issue facing data curation is aligned with insights from the history and sociology of science. Many publications have expressed this view, but Edwards, Jackson, Bowker, and Knobel’s report on challenges regarding infrastructures is probably most relevant to the issue of data stewardship. ((Paul N. Edwards, Steven J Jackson, Geoffrey C Bowker, and Cory P Knobel, “Report of a Workshop on ‘History &amp; Theory of Infrastructure : Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures’ January 2007,” <i>Design</i> 20 (January 2007): 1-50, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353\">http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353</a>.)) It is also more useful and interesting to consider not just data, but a broader range of products, or what Bechhover et al. call “research objects,” such as publications, data, code and algorithms, workflows, and so on. ((Sean Bechhofer, David De Roure, Matthew Gamble, Carole Goble, and Iain Buchan, “Research Objects: Towards Exchange and Reuse of Digital Knowledge,” <i>Nature Proceedings</i> (2010), <a href=\"http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/\">http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/</a>.))\n\nAs a complex system, research-object curation involves tensions, such as those between immediate and long-term goals of development, between global and local implementations, and between planned versus emergent changes in the system. To negotiate these, the system needs actors in different roles, including technical experts, managers, and “champions” who stimulate interest and promote adoption. During systemic growth, users and user communities can become critical to success or failure.\n\nData curation is embedded in social and institutional practices and norms, none of which change more slowly than communication and data-processing technologies. These discontinuities may be part of the reason why culture of sharing and making data public has not been widely adopted, and they may also become obstacles in creating such a culture in the future. As people, practices, and norms play a formative role in data curation, it is important to remember that there are always “winners” and “losers.” Some people initiate and adopt innovation and change, while others resist it and find it hard to fit in. To quote Edwards et al., “It is also possible that a tech-centered approach to the challenge of data sharing inclines us toward failure from the beginning, because it leaves untouched underlying questions of incentives, organization, and culture that have in fact <i>always </i>structured the nature and viability of distributed scientific work.\" ((Edwards et al, “Report of a Workshop,” 32.))\n\nPaths to solutions that Edwards et al. hint at include historical and sociological awareness; the consolidation of local systems and tools; the development of bridges and gateways, as well as boundary workers who can act as “bridge-builders” and “translators”; and more flexibility and collaboration. The question that data curators need to ask themselves is, “Are we playing a role in any of these?”','Kouper - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4609-autosave','','','2013-06-15 22:30:20','2013-06-15 22:30:20','',4609,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4609-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4678,3,'2013-06-15 21:59:28','2013-06-15 21:59:28','I think the biggest issue is us, people. We are capable of building sophisticated tools and infrastructures, but because data curation is a collective enterprise and a long-term dynamic system, we constantly need to negotiate our goals, needs, values, and attitudes. There are many social, political, and historical reasons for data curation to fail or succeed. We need to be aware of that.\r\n\r\nMy view on the biggest issue facing data curation is aligned with insights from the history and sociology of science. Many publications have expressed this view, but Edwards, Jackson, Bowker, and Knobel’s report on challenges regarding infrastructures is probably most relevant to the issue of data stewardship ((Paul N. Edwards, Steven J Jackson, Geoffrey C Bowker, and Cory P Knobel, “Report of a Workshop on ‘History &amp; Theory of Infrastructure : Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures’ January 2007,” <i>Design</i> 20 (January 2007): 1-50, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353\">http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353</a>.)). It is also more useful and interesting to consider not just data, but a broader range of products, or what Bechhover et al. call “research objects,” such as publications, data, code and algorithms, workflows, and so on ((Sean Bechhofer, David De Roure, Matthew Gamble, Carole Goble, and Iain Buchan, “Research Objects: Towards Exchange and Reuse of Digital Knowledge,” <i>Nature Proceedings</i> (2010), <a href=\"http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/\">http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/</a>.)).\r\n\r\nAs a complex system, research-object curation involves tensions, such as those between immediate and long-term goals of development, between global and local implementations, and between planned versus emergent changes in the system. To negotiate these, the system needs actors in different roles, including technical experts, managers, and “champions” who stimulate interest and promote adoption. During systemic growth, users and user communities can become critical to success or failure.\r\n\r\nData curation is embedded in social and institutional practices and norms, none of which change more slowly than communication and data-processing technologies. These discontinuities may be part of the reason why culture of sharing and making data public has not been widely adopted, and they may also become obstacles in creating such a culture in the future. As people, practices, and norms play a formative role in data curation, it is important to remember that there are always “winners” and “losers.” Some people initiate and adopt innovation and change, while others resist it and find it hard to fit in. To quote Edwards et al., “It is also possible that a tech-centered approach to the challenge of data sharing inclines us toward failure from the beginning, because it leaves untouched underlying questions of incentives, organization, and culture that have in fact <i>always </i>structured the nature and viability of distributed scientific work\" ((Edwards et al, “Report of a Workshop,” 32.)).\r\n\r\nPaths to solutions that Edwards et al. hint at include historical and sociological awareness; the consolidation of local systems and tools; the development of bridges and gateways, as well as boundary workers who can act as “bridge-builders” and “translators”; and more flexibility and collaboration. The question that data curators need to ask themselves is, “Are we playing a role in any of these?”','Kouper - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4609-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:59:28','2013-06-15 21:59:28','',4609,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4609-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4679,3,'2013-06-15 21:42:03','2013-06-15 21:42:03','In my current position, data curation is part of the larger design problem of how to use digital tools and methodologies to accomplish innovative humanities research. I am a librarian trained in digital humanities and data curation now working in both an academic research library (University of Maryland Libraries) and in a leadership position at a successful digital humanities center (the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities). My job involves data curation as part of strategic planning, project development, teaching and training, and, most generally, producing public research that others can build upon, continue, and enrich ((Mark Sample, “When Does Service Become Scholarship?” <i>SAMPLE REALITY</i>, February 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.samplereality.com/2013/02/08/when-does-service-become-scholarship/\">http://www.samplereality.com/2013/02/08/when-does-service-become-scholarship/</a>.)). As I have written elsewhere (with Allen Renear), data curation refers to “the challenge of maintaining digital information that is produced in the course of research in a manner that preserves its meaning and usefulness as a potential input for further research.” ((Trevor Muñoz and Allen Renear, “Issues in Humanities Data Curation,” June 15, 2011, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/30852\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/30852</a>.)) This can involve everything from just making the responsibilities for data management explicit in the form of a plan to more intensive work like creating documentation or normalizing “messy” data. In working on the kinds of diverse teams that get assembled to do digital humanities work, I try to be the one who is extra mindful of what is happening to the project data, just as I expect the software developers to be most aware of our technical architecture and the disciplinary specialist to be most aware of what intervention our project is trying to make in scholarly debates.\r\n\r\nI am convinced that as the materials and analytical practices of humanities research become increasingly digital, the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of information science, librarianship, and archival science—which come together in the research and practice of data curation—will become more vital to more humanists. At the level of strategic planning, data curation work is mostly awareness building; this involves introducing data curation into discussions as diverse as how we build all our websites, to how we imagine and staff new positions. At the level of project development, data curation takes a more concrete shape in the work we do. Much of the research I work on is generously supported by funders such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Like funders of scientific research, the Office of Digital Humanities at the NEH requires that proposals for funding include data management plans. Some of my work involves writing these plans and developing practices for monitoring and following up on their content.\r\n\r\nFinally, data curation needs to become part of our shared understanding of what it means to do humanities research, especially with digital materials. This will mean adapting not only our methods and methods courses but also our standards for professional work, benchmarks for success, and the extra-professional socialization into a field that helps new researchers absorb these standards. Part of bringing these changes about involves teaching and training about the importance of data curation and how to do it. I try to contribute to this by finding opportunities to teach data curation to other librarians and humanists. At the first Digital Humanities Winter Institute, which I co-directed with Jennifer Guiliano, we introduced a course on “Data Curation for Digital Humanists” (which Dorothea Salo and I teach). Thanks again to the support of the NEH, Julia Flanders, Dorothea, and I will be offering similar short courses as part of a series of humanities data-curation workshops funded by a grant from the Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities.','Munoz - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4631-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:42:03','2013-06-15 21:42:03','',4631,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4631-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4680,3,'2013-06-15 21:45:11','2013-06-15 21:45:11','In many ways the needs of and pressures on data curation are the same across the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. Moreover, since data curation, like other information sciences, is a “meta-discipline” ((Marcia J. Bates, “The Invisible Substrate of Information Science,” <i>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</i> 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043-50.)) rather than being strictly of the humanities, social sciences, or hard sciences, there are shared concepts and terminology that we can apply to the problems of data curation across disciplines ((See Allen H. Renear, Molly Dolan, Kevin Trainor, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Towards a Cross-Disciplinary Notion of Data Level in Data Curation,” November 11, 2009, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14547</a>.)). Certainly, the technical challenges of preserving digital information—unstable media, basic bit-level data integrity, rendering many different file formats over time, architectures, and the economics of data storage—are shared problems. These pressures may be of differing intensity across communities. Many humanists do not (yet) have to contemplate data volumes measured in exabytes as astronomers do. Already, though, humanists are working with volumes of data too large to manipulate and analyze with conventional, widely available tools; this trend in humanities research is only likely to grow as researchers devote increasing attention to the contemporary moment ((“Big Data,” <i>Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia</i>, February 9, 2013, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_data&amp;oldid=537356997\">http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_data&amp;oldid=537356997</a>.)). The basic structure of the scholarly communication economy is another shared challenge for data curation across the disciplines. Data curation must engage with which scholarly outputs are “published,” how credit is apportioned for them (the citation of datasets, for example), and the role of for-profit corporations in the dissemination of research (in relation to open access and open data movements).\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nEven in the areas where there may be the most divergence about the needs of and pressures on data curation—the evidentiary role of information, the place of “interpretation,” and the nature of “proof”—I think there is more commonality than difference. As the amount of information grows and as the work of research in many disciplines increasingly involves managing and analyzing larger and larger amounts of information, human judgment is paired increasingly with (automated) machine analysis. (Part of data curation is working better with “robots.”) More rigorous conceptual and semantic modeling is needed to incorporate automated algorithmic processes into research—from the search engines everyone uses to the sophisticated data-filtering techniques necessary for working with streams of data coming from large telescopes ((I am indebted to Sayeed Choudhury for the telescope example; any failing in the paraphrasing is mine. Personal conversation.)). Because machines increasingly and inevitably mediate our work with data, the challenges of preserving (human) meaning and interpretation in computational environments for data curation are significant, and this is true across the social sciences, humanities, and the sciences ((Compare David Dubin, Karen M. Wickett, and Simone Sacchi, “Content, Format, and Interpretation,” <i>Balisage: The Markup Conference 2011</i>, August 2 - 5, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html\">http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol7/html/Dubin01/BalisageVol7-Dubin01.html</a>, doi:10.4242/BalisageVol7.Dubin01; and Julia Flanders and Trevor Muñoz, “An Introduction to Humanities Data Curation,” <i>DH Curation Guide</i>, September 22, 2011, <a href=\"http://guide.dhcuration.org/intro/\">http://guide.dhcuration.org/intro/</a>.)).','Munoz - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4633-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:45:11','2013-06-15 21:45:11','',4633,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4633-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4681,3,'2013-06-15 21:47:23','2013-06-15 21:47:23','Carrying out digital research (almost all research is now at least semi-digital) requires that both scholars and information professionals understand how to manage and curate data over its entire lifetime of interest. At the least, individual scholars must be able to document their data curation strategies and evaluate those of collaborators and other purveyors of data.\r\n\r\nIn important ways, data curation is not new. Drawing on increasingly precise conceptual definitions of “data”—information systematically asserted as evidence ((For extended discussion see Allen H. Renear, Simone Sacchi, and Karen M. Wickett, “Definitions of Dataset in the Scientific and Technical Literature,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 47, no. 1 (2010): 1-4, doi:10.1002/meet.14504701240; and Dubin, et al., “Content, Format, and Interpretation.”)). I would hope to convince those who are not primarily data curators that data curation is important to them because the theories and practices of data curation are crucial to communicating the enduring meaning and intent of any scholarship or research in ways that are authentic, contextualized, and complete. The first beneficiaries of data curation work are researchers themselves. Jason Scott from the Internet Archive has said that metadata is a “love note” to the future ((Jason Scott, “The Metadata Mania,” <i>ASCII</i>, June 26, 2011, <a href=\"http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3181\">http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3181</a>.)). In terms of keeping research information comprehensible and usable, even to the person who created it, the future doesn’t need to be far distant, as anyone who has tried to decipher, some months later, a partial reference citation in his notes or tried to remember all the variables of her topic modeling experiment can attest. The strategies for data curation may be as simple as file-naming conventions, data replication, and very basic description. Or, the strategies may be as complicated as managing the integrity and renderability of large, complex 3D representations of information that cannot be recovered after its moment of collection, during the stages of an archaeological excavation, for example.\r\n\r\nMark Sample defines scholarship as “a creative or intellectual act [that is] public and circulates in a community of peers that evaluates and builds upon it.” ((Sample, “When Does Service Become Scholarship?”)) From this definition, it follows that scholarship depends on good data curation practice, which enables the dissemination and circulation of research products in ways that other scholars can build upon.\r\n\r\nI also hope to convince those who are not primarily data curators of the importance of data curation by appealing to the public trust. Much of the research happening in the United States is funded by the public. The resulting data does not belong only to the researcher who creates it, but is held by that person as a public trust. Data curation is part of the ethical responsibility of good research, and that should concern everyone.','Munoz - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4636-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:47:23','2013-06-15 21:47:23','',4636,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4636-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4682,3,'2013-06-15 22:39:27','2013-06-15 22:39:27','Preparing the lectures for an introductory training course on data curation for humanists led to my most enlightening moment so far. In trying to explain the role of social factors in supporting preservation and the re-use of data, I started to see more points of convergence between data curation and work on “crowdsourcing” and closely related ideas of public humanities. This convergence is an effect of the changed information environment for “scholarly” data. Specifically, library and information science (LIS) represent a body of theory and practice on connecting users with information. ((Carole L. Palmer, Allen H. Renear, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data,” December 2, 2008, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764</a>.)) New LIS research on questions of data “value,” which is closely tied to re-use and thus preservation, draws on this older tradition of service to user communities, to develop a thesis that “highly valuable research data are anti-fragile; they are capable of not just persisting over time but actually gaining in value as they are stressed via application to new settings, used in diverse contexts, and transferred amongst a network of systems.” ((Nicholas M. Weber, Karen S. Baker, Andrea K. Thomer, Tiffany C. Chao, and Carole L. Palmer. “Value and Context in Data Use: Domain Analysis Revisited,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 49, no. 1 (2012): 1–10. doi:10.1002/meet.14504901168.)) Attention is a crucial factor in the survival of any particular dataset. The current configuration of Internet technologies has lowered the barrier to the loosely coordinated publishing of information to platforms (like Wikipedia), and these now concentrate an immense amount of attention (due in part to the market dominance of Google’s particular search engine technology). Thus, my moment of enlightenment came from realizing that data curators should be asking what public, web-based resources need to be curated alongside “local” data in order to increase the integration of a research project with a larger information network, which is a public good or a “commons.” Curation of one’s own data might well mean working on someone else’s data—for example, by improving the coverage of women’s history in Wikipedia, ((Mia Ridge, “New Challenges in Digital History: Sharing Women’s History on Wikipedia - My Talk Notes,” <i>Open Objects</i>, March 23, 2013, <a href=\"http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html\">http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html</a>.)) which serves as a source, via things like DBpedia, for identifiers to be used in the “linked data cloud.”\n\nThe digital humanities exist at the intersection of computational technologies with the theories, practices, and research questions of the humanities. Digital humanists have been publishing scholarship to “the Web” since its inception (as documented through crucial early projects like <i><a href=\"http://vos.ucsb.edu/\">Voice of the Shuttle</a>)</i>. The persistence of interest on the part of digital humanists to put more of certain kinds of humanities scholarship into “public” spaces is supported by numerous examples. The enthusiasm for both using and providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to digitized collections, and in creating additions to massively popular publishing software such as WordPress for scholarly purposes, demonstrates this. In other words, the digital humanities engage with “the Web” for scholarly communication, advocacy, etc., but this engagement also has important curatorial and preservation consequences. Palmer, Renear, and Cragin envision that data curators “will build and maintain not only digital libraries and curated data sets, but also the associated indexing systems, metadata standards, ontologies, and retrieval systems.” ((Palmer, Renear, and Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data.”)) I would argue that these indexing systems and ontologies include open, web-based resources like Wikipedia (or maybe structured data resources derived from Wikipedia.) ((For example, <a href=\"http://www.freebase.com/\">http://www.freebase.com/</a>.)) Wikipedia is the quintessential “crowdsourced” project and its use as a shared data resource suggests that data curation needs will push scholars and librarians further toward participating in a public information sphere on the web as a way to support local datasets.','Munoz - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4638-autosave','','','2013-06-15 22:39:27','2013-06-15 22:39:27','',4638,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4638-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4683,3,'2013-06-15 21:50:19','2013-06-15 21:50:19','Preparing the lectures for an introductory training course on data curation for humanists led to my most enlightening moment so far. In trying to explain the role of social factors in supporting preservation and the re-use of data, I started to see more points of convergence between data curation and work on “crowdsourcing” and closely related ideas of public humanities. This convergence is an effect of the changed information environment for “scholarly” data. Specifically, library and information science (LIS) represent a body of theory and practice on connecting users with information ((Carole L. Palmer, Allen H. Renear, and Melissa H. Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data,” December 2, 2008, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9764</a>.)). New LIS research on questions of data “value,” which is closely tied to re-use and thus preservation, draws on this older tradition of service to user communities, to develop a thesis that “highly valuable research data are anti-fragile; they are capable of not just persisting over time but actually gaining in value as they are stressed via application to new settings, used in diverse contexts, and transferred amongst a network of systems.” ((Nicholas M. Weber, Karen S. Baker, Andrea K. Thomer, Tiffany C. Chao, and Carole L. Palmer. “Value and Context in Data Use: Domain Analysis Revisited,” <i>Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i> 49, no. 1 (2012): 1–10. doi:10.1002/meet.14504901168.)) Attention is a crucial factor in the survival of any particular dataset. The current configuration of Internet technologies has lowered the barrier to the loosely coordinated publishing of information to platforms (like Wikipedia), and these now concentrate an immense amount of attention (due in part to the market dominance of Google’s particular search engine technology). Thus, my moment of enlightenment came from realizing that data curators should be asking what public, web-based resources need to be curated alongside “local” data in order to increase the integration of a research project with a larger information network, which is a public good or a “commons.” Curation of one’s own data might well mean working on someone else’s data—for example, by improving the coverage of women’s history in Wikipedia, ((Mia Ridge, “New Challenges in Digital History: Sharing Women’s History on Wikipedia - My Talk Notes,” <i>Open Objects</i>, March 23, 2013, <a href=\"http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html\">http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-challenges-in-digital-history.html</a>.)) which serves as a source, via things like DBpedia, for identifiers to be used in the “linked data cloud”.\r\n\r\nThe digital humanities exist at the intersection of computational technologies with the theories, practices, and research questions of the humanities. Digital humanists have been publishing scholarship to “the Web” since its inception (as documented through crucial early projects like <i>Voice of the Shuttle </i>[link to: <a href=\"http://vos.ucsb.edu/\">http://vos.ucsb.edu/</a>]). The persistence of interest on the part of digital humanists to put more of certain kinds of humanities scholarship into “public” spaces is supported by numerous examples. The enthusiam for both using and providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to digitized collections, and in creating additions to massively popular publishing software such as WordPress for scholarly purposes, demonstrates this. In other words, the digital humanities engage with “the Web” for scholarly communication, advocacy, etc., but this engagement also has important curatorial and preservation consequences. Palmer, Renear, and Cragin envision that data curators “will build and maintain not only digital libraries and curated data sets, but also the associated indexing systems, metadata standards, ontologies, and retrieval systems.” ((Palmer, Renear, and Cragin, “Purposeful Curation: Research and Education for a Future with Working Data.”)) I would argue that these indexing systems and ontologies include open, web-based resources like Wikipedia (or maybe structured data resources derived from Wikipedia.) ((For example, <a href=\"http://www.freebase.com/\">http://www.freebase.com/</a>.)) Wikipedia is the quintessential “crowdsourced” project and its use as a shared data resource suggests that data curation needs will push scholars and librarians further toward participating in a public information sphere on the web as a way to support local datasets.','Munoz - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4638-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:50:19','2013-06-15 21:50:19','',4638,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4638-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4796,10,'2013-06-24 05:23:40','2013-06-24 05:23:40','If you have been in an American public school between 1980 and today, it is highly probable that\r\nyou have played or watched someone playing <a title=\"Oregon Trail Series\" href=\"http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/oregon-trail-series\">The Oregon Trail</a>. ((“Oregon Trail Series,” accessed January 17, 2013, <a title=\"Oregon Trail Series\" href=\"http://www.mobygames.com/gamegroup/oregon-trail-series\">http://www.mobygames.com/gamegroup/oregon-trail-series</a>. Some history of the game is given here: Devin Monnens, “Oregon Trail Ver. 3 (BASIC 3.1, 1978),” Desert Hat, November 7, 2010, <em id=\"__mceDel\"><em id=\"__mceDel\"><a href=\"http://deserthat.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/oregon-trail-ver-3-basic-3-1-1978/\">http://deserthat.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/oregon-trail-ver-3-basic-3-1-1978/</a>.</em></em>)) Originally released by the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium (MECC) for teletypes in the state\'s public schools, the <a title=\"Oregon Trail Canonization\" href=\"http://vgc.gameology.org/content/oregon-trail-canonization\">game has progressed</a> from being played on a mainframe computer, to magazine type-in game, to mobile devices and <a title=\"Facebook: Oregon Settler\" href=\"https://www.facebook.com/appcenter/oregon_settler\">Facebook</a>. ((“On the Oregon Trail to Canonization,” A Video Game Canon, March 31, 2011, <a title=\"Oregon Trail Canonization\" href=\"http://vgc.gameology.org/content/oregon-trail-canonization\">http://vgc.gameology.org/content/oregon-trail-canonization</a>. “Oregon Trail: American Settler,” App Center, Facebook, accessed January 17, 2013, <a title=\"Facebook: Oregon Settler\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/appcenter/oregon_settler\">http://www.facebook.com/appcenter/oregon_settler</a>.)) More accurately called a simulation, The Oregon Trail puts the player in the shoes of an American migrant traveling to Oregon City through obstacles of weather, violence, starvation, and disease. The franchise is almost certainly the most successful educational game series, which, combined with its powerful iconic value, almost certainly guaranteed its inclusion in the case set for the second phase of <a title=\"Preserving Virtual Worlds\" href=\"http://pvw.illinois.edu/pvw2/\">Preserving Virtual</a> <a title=\"Preserving Virtual Worlds\" href=\"http://pvw.illinois.edu/pvw2/\"> Worlds</a> (PVW2). ((Preserving Virtual Worlds 2, accessed January 17, 2013, <a title=\"Preserving Virtual Worlds\" href=\"http://pvw.illinois.edu/pvw2/\">http://pvw.illinois.edu/pvw2/</a>.))\r\n\r\nWhen PVW2 began, we attempted to identify the significant properties of games in our case set with the hope of creating a generalizable methodology for game preservationists in the future. Examining which features changed or remained the same throughout a franchise\'s history was one way we went about identifying those properties, and The Oregon Trail, with <a title=\"Four Decades on the Oregon Trail\" href=\"http://www.icheg.org/blog/chegheads/2010/02/four-decades-on-the-oregon-trail/\">its four-decade</a> <a title=\"Four Decades on the Oregon Trail\" href=\"http://www.icheg.org/blog/chegheads/2010/02/four-decades-on-the-oregon-trail/\"> history</a>, was the perfect candidate. ((Jon-Paul Dyson, “Four Decades on the Oregon Trail,” CHEGheads, February 8, 2010, <a title=\"Four Decades on the Oregon Trail\" href=\"http://www.icheg.org/blog/chegheads/2010/02/four-decades-on-the-oregon-trail/\">http://www.icheg.org/blog/chegheads/2010/02/four-decades-on-the-oregon-trail/</a>.)) The comic below illustrates some of our adventures, with otters representing the researchers. Why otters? All I will say is there might be an Easter egg in the PVW1 final report.','Of Snakebites, Squirrels, and Snow: Significant Properties of the Oregon Trail','','publish','open','open','','of-snakebites-squirrels-and-snow-significant-properties-of-the-oregon-trail','','\nhttp://deserthat.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/oregon-trail-ver-3-basic-3-1-1978/','2013-07-06 23:23:05','2013-07-06 23:23:05','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4796',0,'post','',0),(4686,3,'2013-06-15 23:41:21','2013-06-15 23:41:21','','Caro Pinto','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-caro-pinto','','','2013-07-08 16:25:43','2013-07-08 16:25:43','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4686',0,'guest-author','',0),(4687,3,'2013-06-15 23:40:51','2013-06-15 23:40:51','','pinto_webphoto','','inherit','open','open','','pinto_webphoto','','','2013-06-15 23:40:51','2013-06-15 23:40:51','',4686,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/pinto_webphoto.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4689,3,'2013-06-15 23:51:02','2013-06-15 23:51:02','Librarians have long been critical collaborators with their faculty in higher-education classroom settings, teaching research-education principles and providing one-on-one help with students to locate and evaluate sources for research projects. Until recently, most of these student projects have been research papers of varying lengths; each writing experience is a solo project that leads students to monkish behavior in solitary library carrels and dorm rooms. Today\'s students have new opportunities to apply critical thinking and research skills in transformative digital and collaborative projects. At Harvard, for example, students in an African and African American Studies course recently created digital stories about music, language, and digital media in former Portuguese colonies. ((Carla D. Martin, “Wikipedia, Storify, and Zeega in the Classroom,” <i>Storify</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom\">http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom</a>. This provides an overview of the work students undertook at Harvard University in Carla D. Martin’s fall 2012 course, African and African American Studies 114x: From Cesaria Evora to Dama do Bling: Language, Music, and Digital Media in the Former Portuguese Colonies. Martin reported that she met with librarians before the semester to discuss copyright issues and best practices for working with students on multimedia projects. The librarians also put Martin in touch with faculty who undertook similar projects.)) This type of venture requires a different level of support from and collaboration with librarians who work in classroom settings. The digital landscape demands new roles for teaching librarians and archivists as they shepherd and coordinate a range of projects, working with students and faculty from initial visions to implementation questions to final products.\r\n\r\nAs many courses begin to incorporate digital components, faculty must use course time to cover content <i>and</i> deal with the learning curve involved in utilizing new and unfamiliar digital tools. Faculty often do not have the time or capacity, for example, to teach students how to use blogging platforms or digital storytelling platforms. Teaching librarians and archivists are natural collaborators to facilitate digital learning in classrooms. Especially on liberal arts college campuses, it is increasingly common for teaching librarians to count among their responsibilities the teaching of digital tools and use of instructional technology. Librarians can provide one-stop support for faculty and students in classes with digital research and project components. ((Barbara A. Rockenbach, “Archives, Undergraduates, and Inquiry-Based Learning: Case Studies from Yale University Library,” <i>American Archivist</i> 74, no. 1 (2011): 297.)) Teaching librarians and archivists focus on process: how to use software, how to deploy archival sources, how to understand the finer points of copyright, and how to support and preserve projects and their accompanying data for the long term. We can leave the content to faculty; though we may be subject experts, one of our unsung strengths lies in project management, in the shepherding of student research from amorphous ideas to concrete sets of questions. We can collaborate with faculty to implement project guidelines that meet students’ learning goals and that can support digital projects on various platforms, including curated exhibits that engage a range of critical thinking skills.\r\n\r\n<b>Skills for Teaching Librarians &amp; Archivists in the Digital Age</b>\r\n\r\nTeaching librarians and archivists are no longer simply bibliographers or collections experts. Now they are research and technology sherpas, guiding faculty and students towards meaningful learning experiences and successful projects. The digital age requires us to have a new suite of skills that prepares us to support digital scholarship in classrooms or to communicate effectively with teams of technologists and information professionals—instructional technologists, reference archivists, GIS specialists, and visual resources librarians—on a range of projects. Teaching librarians and archivists may also be:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><b>Digital Humanists</b> who use the “methods of contemporary humanities in studying digital objects.” ((Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “The Humanities, Done Digitally,” <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i>, May 8, 2011, sec. The Digital Campus 2011, <a href=\"http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/\">http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/</a>.)) Projects like Around DH in 80 days provide an opportunity for seasoned DH practitioners and newbies alike to engage with the Digital Humanities in a global context. ((“Around DH in 80 Days,” <i>Global Outlook::Digital Humanities</i>, February 4, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/\">http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/</a>. This project grew out of an information-sharing project that Digital Scholarship Coordinator Alex Gill undertook in the Columbia University Libraries to showcase new digital humanities work around the world.)) Other recent examples of successful Digital Humanities projects include Jen Rajchel’s senior thesis on Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr poetry, Harvard\'s efforts to reimagine teaching, and the work of Emory University faculty, technologists, and librarians to build interactive maps to track lynchings in Georgia. ((Jen Rajchel, “Introduction,” <i>Mooring Gaps: Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr Poetry</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu/\">http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu</a>. Rajchel reported that the director of library collections, the head of special collections, and the curator for rare books and manuscripts supported the project in terms of exploring collections, learning to use microfilm, and navigating copyright. “Lynchings in Georgia (1875-1930),” n.d., <a href=\"http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930\">http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930</a>. “Projects | metaLAB (at) Harvard,” n.d., <a href=\"http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/\">http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/</a>.))</li>\r\n	<li><b>Trend spotters</b> who scan the horizon for emerging tools and technologies, evaluate them, and introduce them in projects and undergraduate classrooms. Should libraries buy 3-D printers? How can libraries support MOOCs? Communities of practice like <a href=\"https://sites.google.com/a/edu-isis.org/isis/\">ISIS</a> and THATCamp help support the continuous professional development of librarians and information technologists through online seminars and drop-in sessions, where they can discuss emerging trends and best practices.</li>\r\n	<li><b>Adjudicators </b>who understand comprehensively the copyrights of moving and still images and other archival materials in print and digital form. Using resources like the <i><a href=\"http://policynotes.arl.org/\">Association of Research Libraries’ Policy Notes blog</a></i> and Nancy Sims’ <a href=\"http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/\">excellent copyright guide blog</a>, teaching librarians and archivists knowledgeable in this area can help faculty and students navigate the murky and shifting copyright landscape. These adjudicators can support exciting research and projects that blend old formats with new media.</li>\r\n	<li><b>Project Managers </b>who coordinate larger-scale projects and facilitate collaborative projects among groups of students in undergraduate settings. Exciting initiatives like the winter and summer Digital Humanities Institutes bring faculty, librarians, students, and museum professionals together to tackle project development and management through their curriculums. Project management encompasses far more than ensuring that timelines are met and workload evenly distributed among team members. Project management requires leadership and vision to empower teams and to deploy new tools for new goals.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nWhile teaching librarians and archivists are uniquely positioned to help integrate student learning objectives with project outcomes and to create new opportunities for curriculum engagement, they are also facing a moment of creative destruction of some of the more traditional elements of librarianship. Embracing instructional work in the digital age means rethinking how teaching librarians and archivists spend their valuable time. For example, many teaching librarians are also selectors for library materials, so they could probably have more time for integrative teaching and digital project management if vendor-approval plans and patron-driven acquisitions automated collection-development work. While some might bemoan this as a loss of some of the “artisan” qualities of librarianship, it is an opportunity to reimagine public-facing positions to meet the needs of the rapidly changing higher-education landscape. As libraries move away from being simply content collectors to content creators, librarians and archivists must also make sometimes scary but necessary transitions. ((Brian Matthews, <i>“Think Like a Startup: </i><i>a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism,” </i>April 2012, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/10919/18649\">http://hdl.handle.net/10919/18649</a>.))\r\n\r\nTogether, faculty and librarians can collaborate to make meaningful assignments and learning experiences for undergraduate students within a new digital framework.  Such partnerships ensure that students\' first forays into this area are successful, but can also help more advanced practitioners on more complicated projects. No student or faculty member can complete successful digital projects on their own; such projects require a village of librarians, archivists, technologists, faculty, and students to build, implement, and sustain them.','Teaching Librarians & Project Management: New Expectations for the Digital Age','','publish','open','open','','teaching-librarians-project-management-new-expectations-for-the-digital-age','','http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/\nhttp://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/\nhttp://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/','2013-06-21 22:22:03','2013-06-21 22:22:03','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4689',0,'post','',0),(4690,3,'2013-06-15 23:50:37','2013-06-15 23:50:37','Librarians have long been critical collaborators with their faculty in higher-education classroom settings, teaching research-education principles and providing one-on-one help with students to locate and evaluate sources for research projects. Until recently, most of these student projects have been research papers of varying lengths; each writing experience is a solo project that leads students to monkish behavior in solitary library carrels and dorm rooms. Today\'s students have new opportunities to apply critical thinking and research skills in transformative digital and collaborative projects. At Harvard, for example, students in an African and African American Studies course recently created digital stories about music, language, and digital media in former Portuguese colonies. ((Carla D. Martin, “Wikipedia, Storify, and Zeega in the Classroom,” <i>Storify</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom\">http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom</a>. This provides an overview of the work students undertook at Harvard University in Carla D. Martin’s fall 2012 course, African and African American Studies 114x: From Cesaria Evora to Dama do Bling: Language, Music, and Digital Media in the Former Portuguese Colonies. Martin reported that she met with librarians before the semester to discuss copyright issues and best practices for working with students on multimedia projects. The librarians also put Martin in touch with faculty who undertook similar projects.)) This type of venture requires a different level of support from and collaboration with librarians who work in classroom settings. The digital landscape demands new roles for teaching librarians and archivists as they shepherd and coordinate a range of projects, working with students and faculty from initial visions to implementation questions to final products.\n\nAs many courses begin to incorporate digital components, faculty must use course time to cover content <i>and</i> deal with the learning curve involved in utilizing new and unfamiliar digital tools. Faculty often do not have the time or capacity, for example, to teach students how to use blogging platforms or digital storytelling platforms. Teaching librarians and archivists are natural collaborators to facilitate digital learning in classrooms. Especially on liberal arts college campuses, it is increasingly common for teaching librarians to count among their responsibilities the teaching of digital tools and use of instructional technology. Librarians can provide one-stop support for faculty and students in classes with digital research and project components. ((Barbara A. Rockenbach, “Archives, Undergraduates, and Inquiry-Based Learning: Case Studies from Yale University Library,” <i>American Archivist</i> 74, no. 1 (2011): 297.)) Teaching librarians and archivists focus on process: how to use software, how to deploy archival sources, how to understand the finer points of copyright, and how to support and preserve projects and their accompanying data for the long term. We can leave the content to faculty; though we may be subject experts, one of our unsung strengths lies in project management, in the shepherding of student research from amorphous ideas to concrete sets of questions. We can collaborate with faculty to implement project guidelines that meet students’ learning goals and that can support digital projects on various platforms, including curated exhibits that engage a range of critical thinking skills.\n\n<b>Skills for Teaching Librarians &amp; Archivists in the Digital Age</b>\n\nTeaching librarians and archivists are no longer simply bibliographers or collections experts. Now they are research and technology sherpas, guiding faculty and students towards meaningful learning experiences and successful projects. The digital age requires us to have a new suite of skills that prepares us to support digital scholarship in classrooms or to communicate effectively with teams of technologists and information professionals—instructional technologists, reference archivists, GIS specialists, and visual resources librarians—on a range of projects. Teaching librarians and archivists may also be:\n<ul>\n	<li><b>Digital Humanists</b> who use the “methods of contemporary humanities in studying digital objects.” ((Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “The Humanities, Done Digitally,” <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i>, May 8, 2011, sec. The Digital Campus 2011, <a href=\"http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/\">http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/</a>.)) Projects like Around DH in 80 days provide an opportunity for seasoned DH practitioners and newbies alike to engage with the Digital Humanities in a global context. ((“Around DH in 80 Days,” <i>Global Outlook::Digital Humanities</i>, February 4, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/\">http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/</a>. This project grew out of an information-sharing project that Digital Scholarship Coordinator Alex Gill undertook in the Columbia University Libraries to showcase new digital humanities work around the world.)) Other recent examples of successful Digital Humanities projects include Jen Rajchel’s senior thesis on Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr poetry, Harvard\'s efforts to reimagine teaching, and the work of Emory University faculty, technologists, and librarians to build interactive maps to track lynchings in Georgia. ((Jen Rajchel, “Introduction,” <i>Mooring Gaps: Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr Poetry</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu/\">http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu</a>. Rajchel reported that the director of library collections, the head of special collections, and the curator for rare books and manuscripts supported the project in terms of exploring collections, learning to use microfilm, and navigating copyright. “Lynchings in Georgia (1875-1930),” n.d., <a href=\"http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930\">http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930</a>. “Projects | metaLAB (at) Harvard,” n.d., <a href=\"http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/\">http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/</a>.))</li>\n	<li><b>Trend spotters</b> who scan the horizon for emerging tools and technologies, evaluate them, and introduce them in projects and undergraduate classrooms. Should libraries buy 3-D printers? How can libraries support MOOCs? Communities of practice like <a href=\"https://sites.google.com/a/edu-isis.org/isis/\">ISIS</a> and THATCamp help support the continuous professional development of librarians and information technologists through online seminars and drop-in sessions, where they can discuss emerging trends and best practices.</li>\n	<li><b>Adjudicators </b>who understand comprehensively the copyrights of moving and still images and other archival materials in print and digital form. Using resources like the <i><a href=\"http://policynotes.arl.org/\">Association of Research Libraries’ Policy Notes blog</a></i> and Nancy Sims’ <a href=\"http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/\">excellent copyright guide blog</a>, teaching librarians and archivists knowledgeable in this area can help faculty and students navigate the murky and shifting copyright landscape. These adjudicators can support exciting research and projects that blend old formats with new media.</li>\n	<li><b>Project Managers </b>who coordinate larger-scale projects and facilitate collaborative projects among groups of students in undergraduate settings. Exciting initiatives like the winter and summer Digital Humanities Institutes bring faculty, librarians, students, and museum professionals together to tackle project development and management through their curriculums. Project management encompasses far more than ensuring that timelines are met and workload evenly distributed among team members. Project management requires leadership and vision to empower teams and to deploy new tools for new goals.</li>\n</ul>\nWhile teaching librarians and archivists are uniquely positioned to help integrate student learning objectives with project outcomes and to create new opportunities for curriculum engagement, they are also facing a moment of creative destruction of some of the more traditional elements of librarianship. Embracing instructional work in the digital age means rethinking how teaching librarians and archivists spend their valuable time. For example, many teaching librarians are also selectors for library materials, so they could probably have more time for integrative teaching and digital project management if vendor-approval plans and patron-driven acquisitions automated collection-development work. While some might bemoan this as a loss of some of the “artisan” qualities of librarianship, it is an opportunity to reimagine public-facing positions to meet the needs of the rapidly changing higher-education landscape. As libraries move away from being simply content collectors to content creators, librarians and archivists must also make sometimes scary but necessary transitions. [6]\n\nTogether, faculty and librarians can collaborate to make meaningful assignments and learning experiences for undergraduate students within a new digital framework.  Such partnerships ensure that students\' first forays into this area are successful, but can also help more advanced practitioners on more complicated projects. No student or faculty member can complete successful digital projects on their own; such projects require a village of librarians, archivists, technologists, faculty, and students to build, implement, and sustain them.','Teaching Librarians & Project Management: New Expectations for the Digital Age','','inherit','open','open','','4689-revision','','','2013-06-15 23:50:37','2013-06-15 23:50:37','',4689,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4689-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4691,3,'2013-06-17 22:54:04','2013-06-17 22:54:04','Why address data curation in a journal that centers on the “use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education”? The five works collected in “Curating the Digital, Curating the Analog,” the latest installment of “Archives, Remixed,” connect archival theory, practice, and pedagogy to data curation. Acts of selecting, storing, and making content available for use are synonymous in analog special collections and data archives, but in each professional context, this set of activities has developed independently. Both domains would benefit from the other’s perspectives and experiences. At the same time, primary source materials are converging in new forms of research output, regardless of their category as datasets housed in data archives or as born-digital correspondence housed in a special collection. These and other conditions of data creation and record keeping make the case for a broad and inclusive consideration of data curation. As the contributions herein suggest, special collections libraries and archives need to shift from passive collecting practices to strategies that engage proactive stakeholders in the life cycle of information, and they need to begin to actively collect digital information. Data curators should draw upon traditional archival approaches to shape long-term stewardship. Once material is in the custody of any repository, linkages to other repositories should be created to enable new forms of inquiry and data manipulation. \r\n\r\nIn “Curating the Digital, Curating the Analog,” we offer an eclectic set of contributions intended to challenge, edify, reinforce, tease out, and contextualize what it means to do data curation across a range of domains. At the same time, readers will see there are certain strands, in the form of ideas or conceptual approaches, that tie the articles together. Long-held archival concepts, workflows, and roles demand evaluation and revision in order to adapt to born-digital objects. Plumbing the historical and theoretical underpinnings of archives in his article, Jefferson Bailey revisits the principle of respect des fonds, in effect turning this age-old principle on its head in a consideration of how to curate born-digital materials. In doing so, he calls attention to how users interact with online archives and how that differs markedly from what takes place in an analog environment. These and other issues of use and users that Bailey identifies also resonate with data curation pedagogy and practice, which Palmer, Weber, Muñoz, and Renear examine in their article. As they assert, understanding “research cultures” is foundational to data curation and to the “purposeful work” curatorial methods entail. The data curation curriculum that Palmer et al. propose takes an integrative view, combining established concepts of curation with tenets that are germane to “library, archival, and computer science.” In addition to research cultures, the development and management of collections and the representation of information are also key to the practice of data curation. The former reflects the heterogeneity and complexity of data and its life cycle, while the latter draws upon notions of identity, ontology, and provenance for organizing and characterizing information.\r\n\r\nIn their contribution, echoing Palmer et al., Andrew Asher and Lori Jahnke delve into the research culture of ethnographers, and thus into researchers’ perspectives on data curation, especially the collection and management of data. They address the ethical conundrums that can infuse certain aspects of data collection and sharing in the realm of ethnographic research, particularly in terms of fieldnotes, where the cultural, personal, and private are at obvious cross-purposes with the notion of public access. Asher and Jahnke also call out what might be described as a missing link in data management for researchers—programmatic education about it.\r\n\r\nShades of what Bailey and Palmer et al. argue in their articles, particularly with regard to user interaction, user communities, and, as the latter authors say, the “formal characteristics of information objects that carry digital data,” appear in Rachel Donahue’s contribution. Employing the artful device of comics, Donahue reports on a study of the digital preservation requirements for a highly popular video game about pioneer life in the West. With the aim of developing a curatorial method that could be applied to collections of games of similar formats, the study documented the significant properties of the video game and learned from players (users) what was important to preserve and retain about the game. Through her comic, Donahue essentially captures curation in action. \r\n\r\nMany of the topics regarding roles, responsibilities, archival practices, and data representation that arise in the aforementioned articles come together felicitously in the conversation between Kristin Yarmey and Lynn Yarmey, two practitioners who are sisters. Kristin, a digital services librarian, and Lynn, a data curator at a predominantly federally funded research center, engage in an informal dialogue. They discuss the ways in which their jobs converge because of shared objectives and diverge because of the different contexts of their work. Yarmey and Yarmey engage in a dialogue that also evokes the integrative view fleshed out by Palmer et al. Through their dialogue, they show how data curation in practice refers back to the disciplines of library and information science, archival studies, and computer science.\r\n  \r\nThe pieces gathered in “Curating the Digital, Curating the Analog” reflect recurring, pivotal ideas. One such idea is a keen appreciation for users of archives and the research communities to which they belong. Collectively, our authors advocate for close collaborations between archivists, data curators, and researchers. They emphasize education in data curation, suggesting it is as important to the researchers who collect data as it is to the practitioners who care for it. The representation, context, and description of data, all of which are crucial to data reuse, also constitute a pronounced theme. In essence, this issue explores the various roles, perspectives, and practices grounded in the commitment to preserve data, for the purpose of making it discoverable, accessible, and usable over the long term. It presents a narrative about data and data curation in archival, educational, research, and library settings that we think will prove relevant to readers of Archive Journal.\r\n','Curating the Analog, Curating the Digital','','publish','open','open','','curating-the-analog-curating-the-digital','','','2013-07-01 03:59:24','2013-07-01 03:59:24','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4691',0,'post','',0),(4692,3,'2013-06-17 22:46:34','2013-06-17 22:46:34','','Curating the Analog, Curating the Digital','','inherit','open','open','','4691-revision','','','2013-06-17 22:46:34','2013-06-17 22:46:34','',4691,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4691-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4693,3,'2013-06-17 22:52:00','2013-06-17 22:52:00','','Patricia Hswe','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-patricia-hswe','','','2013-07-08 16:39:55','2013-07-08 16:39:55','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4693',0,'guest-author','',0),(4896,3,'2013-06-27 20:56:42','2013-06-27 20:56:42','','bb_hswe_webphoto','','inherit','open','open','','bb_hswe_webphoto','','','2013-06-27 20:56:42','2013-06-27 20:56:42','',4693,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bb_hswe_webphoto.gif',0,'attachment','image/gif',0),(4695,3,'2013-06-17 22:52:45','2013-06-17 22:52:45','','Erin O\'Meara','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-erin-omeara','','','2013-07-08 16:29:30','2013-07-08 16:29:30','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4695',0,'guest-author','',0),(4895,3,'2013-06-27 20:54:33','2013-06-27 20:54:33','','omeara_webphoto2','','inherit','open','open','','omeara_webphoto2','','','2013-06-27 20:54:33','2013-06-27 20:54:33','',4695,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/omeara_webphoto2.gif',0,'attachment','image/gif',0),(4697,3,'2013-06-17 22:53:54','2013-06-17 22:53:54','Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.\n\nLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.\n\n&nbsp;','Curating the Analog, Curating the Digital','','inherit','open','open','','4691-revision-2','','','2013-06-17 22:53:54','2013-06-17 22:53:54','',4691,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4691-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4698,3,'2013-06-18 00:03:53','2013-06-18 00:03:53','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nBy vastly increasing the volume and types of data that field researchers can collect, digital technologies have reshaped ethnographers’ relationship with their accumulated research data and materials. Whereas paper-based fieldnotes and other physical ethnographic records are often deposited in repositories and made accessible only after a scholar’s death, the emergence of born-digital materials has created and enhanced possibilities for rapidly sharing data, not only with other researchers but also with research subjects and the public at large via online repositories. While many researchers support the principal of public access to research data, making this data available online can compound the ethical dilemmas ethnographers face. Ethnographers often find themselves torn between contradictory imperatives to share data publically and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the individuals and communities they study. ((L. Jahnke, A. Asher, and S.D.C. Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>, CLIR Publication #154 (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2012).))\r\n\r\nUnlike experimental data, ethnographic data, by definition, are not reproducible. ((See Sydel Silverman, “Introduction,” in <i>Preserving the Anthropological Record</i>, ed. Sydel Silverman and Nancy J. Parezo (New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1995), 1.)) Ethnographic fieldwork is inextricably linked to a particular time, place, and society, making the primary data of ethnographers unique and unrecoverable. For this reason, today’s ethnographic fieldnotes are particularly important to preserve as tomorrow’s historical records; they document observations of places and cultures that—because they are in a constant state of change—will never exist in the same configuration again. Since ethnographic fieldnotes provide the empirical basis for researchers’ public authority, it would likewise seem logical for fieldnotes and other ethnographic materials to be made available for verification purposes in online repositories as soon as possible after the publication of research reports, articles, or monographs.\r\n\r\nHowever, several characteristics of ethnographic materials cause them to be particularly difficult to make publically accessible. First, many ethnographic researchers are reluctant to share their data for personal reasons. Ethnographic fieldnotes are intensely personal documents for many researchers, who often view them as extremely valuable for their own work, but doubt that they would be useful to other researchers without the accompanying contexts and experiences in which the materials were collected. Secondly, ethnographic materials also routinely contain private, confidential, or culturally sensitive information about both research subjects and the researcher, which often requires time-consuming or costly procedures to redact, and may limit or prevent public dissemination and secondary analyses of the data. Finally, ethnographic materials are regularly collected in contexts with varying or conflicting cultural standards for consent and data use, raising ethical questions about the efficacy of archiving these materials. For these reasons, balancing the multiple imperatives of data sharing, informed consent, and confidentiality for research participants is a fundamental issue for ethnographers preparing to deposit their materials in an archives, and the ethics surrounding these decisions was one of the most common and recurring themes in the interviews conducted for the study we present here.\r\n\r\nUsing data gathered during the 2011-2012 academic year in a qualitative study of researchers’ data management and curation practices, ((This study was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and managed by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). See Jahnke, Asher, and Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>.)) this article examines the practical and ethical dilemmas ethnographers face as they work with diverse research materials across varying, and sometimes conflicting, cultural standards for consent and data use. By emphasizing the everyday practices of researchers, this study sought to gain a holistic understanding of the workflows involved in the creation, management, and preservation of research data in order to better comprehend researchers’ unmet needs within data curation processes. Twenty-three researchers from varying ranks working in a variety of social science disciplines at five universities ((Penn State University, Lehigh University, Bucknell University, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Pennsylvania.)) participated in interviews for this study (see Table 1), which focused on how researchers collect and analyze data, how they manage and preserve these data, and what training they have had in data-curation practices.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4704\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"746\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/asher-jahnke_remixed_3_TABLE.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-4704 \" alt=\"Table 1. Rank and academic discipline of the study participants.  *The nine starred participants conducted significant amounts of ethnographic research.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/asher-jahnke_remixed_3_TABLE-932x1024.jpg\" width=\"746\" height=\"819\" /></a> Table 1. Rank and academic discipline of the study participants. *The nine starred participants conducted significant amounts of ethnographic research.[/caption]\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nAlthough scholars across many disciplines were grappling with the ethical and philosophical problems of data sharing—often in the absence of coherent policies for data archiving and release from funding agencies, professional organizations, or their employing institutions—this article will focus on the experiences of nine of these researchers who conducted ethnography as part of their data collection. Because ethnographic research involves a complex social interplay between researchers and respondents, often from differing cultural contexts, the management of these data presents unique difficulties for researchers who usually have little or no training in preservation, curation, or data-stewardship strategies. This article will examine how researchers navigate these difficulties when dealing with the two principal types of ethnographic data: fieldnotes—the diverse array of notes, writings, and other materials upon which researchers base their ethnographies ((Jean E. Jackson, “I Am a Fieldnote,” in <i>Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology</i>, ed. Roger Sanjek (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 1.))—and the research artifacts, such as transcripts and audio or video recordings, produced from more formal, direct interactions with respondents.\r\n\r\n<b>The Data Sharing Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nFunding agencies—especially agencies administering public funds—are increasingly requiring qualitative research data to be made publically available. Since 1995, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)—a major source of funding for qualitative research in the United Kingdom—has required its awardees to archive their data as a condition of funding. ((See O. Parry and N. S. Mauthner, “Whose Data Are They Anyway?” <i>Sociology</i> 38, no. 1 (2004): 140-41.)) Similarly, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other US funding agencies (e.g. National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities) have begun to require formal data-management plans detailing how researchers will meet data-sharing expectations. Our assumption is that this trend will continue as both public and private funders seek maximum returns on their investment in research. While not always explicitly required, the goal of many of these policies is for research data to be deposited in an appropriate repository with online access for both other researchers and the public. For ethnographers, who are often accustomed to retaining exclusive rights over their fieldnotes and other materials, this can represent an uncomfortable shift in research practice, even when these repositories take into account the particular confidentiality and consent demands inherent to ethnographic research (discussed further below) and implement appropriate safeguards such as embargoing or redacting sensitive materials.\r\n\r\nIn principal, the ethnographic researchers we interviewed for this study saw data preservation and sharing as positive values, even if they were not sure about how to preserve and share data or who would potentially use the materials. When asked about what parts of her research data she would like to preserve, one anthropologist explained:\r\n<blockquote>That’s the thing—If you keep anything long enough it becomes interesting. . . . For myself . . . I would love to archive everything and maybe put some kind of time stamp on personal information where it can’t be released for some amount of time. It’s so hard to know what people in the future would be interested in. . . . I try to keep data in such a way that hopefully it would be comprehensible to someone else if they were willing to work through my crazy software. . . . If I had somebody’s fieldnotes from 100 years ago from my field site, I’d be totally fascinated by that, so you never know what people are going to be interested in. (2-16-120211) ((The number in parentheses is the participant identification number; please refer to Table 1.))</blockquote>\r\nThe scholarly societies to which many of these researchers belong also broadly support data sharing and potential reuse. The most recent 2012 revision on the American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) ethics statement explicitly states that it is the obligation of the researcher to preserve records and make results accessible, “Anthropologists have an ethical responsibility for ensuring the integrity, preservation, and protection of their work” and, the “results of anthropological research should be disseminated in a timely fashion” provided it is not “at the expense of protecting confidentiality.” ((American Anthropological Association (AAA), <i>Statement on Ethics: Principals of Professional Responsibility</i>, 2012, <a href=\"http://www.aaanet.org/profdev/ethics/upload/Statement-on-Ethics-Principles-of-Professional-Responsibility.pdf\">http://www.aaanet.org/profdev/ethics/upload/Statement-on-Ethics-Principles-of-Professional-Responsibility.pdf</a>.)) The previous 1998 version also addressed data access and preservation, but not as systematically or forcefully. ((This version was slightly revised in 2009 to make minor changes to some of the statement’s language. Since this revision did not alter the structure or main points of the statement, we continue to refer the 1998 version (as does the AAA’s ethics website). American Anthropological Association, Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association, Statement, 1998, B.4-5, C1.)) Likewise, the American Sociological Association sets similar expectations in the data sharing section of its Code of Ethics. ((American Sociological Association, Code of Ethics, 1999, 13.05.))\r\n\r\nThe benefits of data archiving and sharing for scholarly disciplines and the advancement of knowledge are straightforward: preserved materials can be subjected to secondary analysis, unnecessary duplication of research can be minimized, historical records can be maintained, and, importantly, scholars can independently evaluate the validity of published results by consulting the primary data. ((Libby Bishop, “Ethical Sharing and Reuse of Qualitative Data,” <i>Australian Journal of Social Issues</i> 44, no. 3 (2009): 266.)) Furthermore, online repositories might enable new forms of scholarship and writing. For the first time, materials preserved and made accessible online have made it feasible to make publically available the corpus of primary texts that form the basis of support for ethnographic argumentation. While a non-digitized, paper-based collection could also serve this purpose, it is unlikely that more than a handful of interested readers of a particular ethnography would physically travel to the repository to examine the documents. Repositories that make resources available online fundamentally change this dynamic. In <i>Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive, </i>Johannes Fabian explores these possibilities by conducting what he describes as an experiment with “writing ethnography ‘in the presence of texts’” located in a publically accessible online repository. ((Johannes Fabian, <i>Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive</i> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), vii.)) Fabian terms this genre of writing “commentary,” a text-centered form of ethnography that assumes his reader can simultaneously consult a primary text for her or himself via an online archive. ((Ibid., 9-13.))\r\n\r\nThe text Fabian utilizes is a conversation he and Kahenga Mukonkwa Michel had about a ceremony Kahenga conducted at Fabian’s home in Zaire in 1974. ((Ibid., 3.)) The transcription, translation, and an audio excerpt of the discussion are now housed in the Archives of Popular Swahili on the website of the Language and Popular Culture in Africa project. ((Johannes. Fabian, “‘Magic and Modernity’: A Conversation with a Herbalist and Practitioner of Magic,” trans. Johannes Fabian, <i>Archives of Popular Swahili</i> 7 (2005), <a href=\"http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol7/kahengatext.html#introduction\">http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol7/kahengatext.html#introduction</a>.)) Fabian argues that the repository of documents serves an important epistemological purpose by “mediat[ing] between . . . events, the presentation of evidence, and our aims and claims to produce anthropological knowledge.” ((Fabian, “Magic,” 123.)) By allowing the reader of an ethnography to interrogate and evaluate the primary data on which it is based, the archive reveals how ethnographies are composed through the confrontation between the researcher, his or her respondents, and the texts they co-create. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography</i>, 54. One does wonder, however, why Fabian considered a traditionally published monograph necessary to this project, rather than simply including it in the archive. Given that his book annotates the online texts using paragraph numbers that assume a specific online layout, it would seem more effective to have created hyperlinks between the commentary and the primary materials. In this way, the “experiment” seems incomplete.))\r\n\r\nFabian’s instructive experiment notwithstanding, for many researchers the practice of making ethnographic materials available online is fraught. Ethnography requires researchers to occupy a methodological position that mediates and translates between multiple cultural contexts. This positioning leads to a number of difficulties for ethnographers as they attempt to meet their obligations to multiple constituencies—including funders, cultural institutions, and the researcher’s employing university, in addition to the individuals and communities the researcher works with—while negotiating the processes of placing materials in archives and repositories. When working with human subjects, ethical pitfalls abound, and often ethnographers must resolve contradictions between these groups.\r\n\r\nAt a very basic level, policies requiring access to research data may “directly [contradict] some ethnic groups’ cultural traditions concerning secrecy and controlled access to information.” ((David Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives: Possible Futures and Contingent Pasts. Archives as Anthropological Surrogates,” <i>Annual Review of Anthropology</i> 41, no. 1 (2012): 472, doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145721. See also G. Isaac, “Whose Idea Was This?: Museums, Replicas, and the Reproduction of Knowledge,” <i>Current Anthropology</i> 52, no. 2 (2011) 211-233.)) For example, an anthropologist might gain access to knowledge that is secret, or restricted for cultural or social reasons. During his fieldwork with the Saramaka, a group in Suriname who descended from escaped African slaves, Richard Price gained knowledge about the “Old-Time People” who experienced the war for liberation from roughly 1680 to 1762. ((Richard Price, <i>First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People</i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 5-6. For additional examples and a discussion of cross-cultural differences in relation to access to knowledge see Nancy J. Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage: CoPAR, Anthropological Records, and the Archival Community,” <i>The American Archivist </i>62 (1999): 285, note 24.)) The Saramaka consider knowledge about this time and these people powerful, dangerous, and restricted. Price struggled with the ethical implications of publishing a book within a different cultural system that uses this knowledge as its primary subject. ((Price, <i>First Time, </i>21-23.)) Price notes that by putting the information in a public document, he potentially “deprives [the] author of control (except perhaps via the language in which [the book] appears) over [his or her] audience.” ((Ibid., 23.)) This problem is compounded exponentially once information is made available online (as Price’s book now is, at least in part, in Google Books) by removing even the physical restrictions of a bound monograph.\r\n\r\nInformation need not be “exotic” to create publishing difficulties for ethnographers. For example, an ethnographer working in a corporate, government, or other institutional setting in the United States might be privy to proprietary or confidential information about a product or service that must be ethically and legally protected. A researcher in environmental engineering explained her process when conducting interviews:\r\n<blockquote>Another big concern is confidentiality because I record those conversations, and then there’s kind of an extended period of time in which I allow those who I’ve talked with to redact parts of our conversation if they’ve talked about things they would prefer to remain private. . . I’m talking to several companies about the development and production of their technologies and so there’s some proprietary information that comes up and that’s really the main concern. (5-20-020212)</blockquote>\r\nIndeed, accidental release of this type of information might put the researcher at as much legal risk as her respondents.\r\n\r\nWhen preparing to preserve ethnographic data, issues of ownership and authorship are also not always straightforward, and it is imperative that researchers communicate and address these potential problems with archivists, data curators, and repository and digital collection managers before depositing ethnographic materials. For example, consent forms for interviews might not clearly state who holds the copyright or who has a license to use the recording or transcripts, potentially leading to confusion over the legal status of these materials and making it more difficult for a researcher to transfer materials to an archives. Intellectual property and copyright are themselves culturally specific concepts, and a legal right to dispose of or deposit materials as a researcher sees fit does not equal an ethical right to do so. The people providing information, the funders, the institution that employs the researcher, and the community in which the researcher works all have a moral interest in the disposition of the data. ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 4; Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 142.)) Parry and Mauthner go so far as to say, “[B]ecause the construction of qualitative data is a joint endeavor between respondent and researcher, both parties should retain authorship/ownership rights over the data,” which creates “practical, legal and ethical implications for archiving and re-use.” ((Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 141.))\r\n\r\nSome researchers, including Fabian, argue that since ethnographers and their respondents are joint agents in creating ethnographic materials, both parties should be named to acknowledge their contributions. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography, </i>16-17.)) However, naming respondents as authors or contributors contradicts an ethnographer’s imperative to protect the confidentiality of their research participants, which is a basic standard required by most Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved research and by professional-ethics statements. While David Zeitlyn observes that “a default assumption that notes will be anonymized conflicts with an individual’s moral right to be recognized as the author of his or her words,” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 470.)) many, if not most, ethnographers would likely be uncomfortable naming their participants in almost any context, but especially in publically accessible online repositories. This is likely to hold true even if a researcher philosophically accepts that his or her authority to determine the level of sensitivity that the data require privileges the researcher’s position vis-à-vis his or her respondents. ((Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 148.))\r\n\r\nMany ethnographers thus understand themselves not so much as owners of their data, but rather as stewards or custodians of data that are produced by a complex set of relationships between researchers and respondents. ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 4-5.)) As the stewards of these data, researchers are often the de facto interpreters of the terms by which data are made available, choosing what and when to publish or deposit materials in repositories or archives. Despite his assertion that correspondents should be named, Fabian notes that he exercises this stewardship by attempting not to publish anything that might be dangerous or damaging to the people with whom he worked—a position that is probably made easier by the fact that the texts he is working with were already 30 years old when he transcribed and posted them on the web. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography, </i>16-17.)) Many researchers we interviewed adopted a similar “attitude of moral responsibility towards research participants, expressed in the way in which data are handled,” ((Annamaria Carusi and Marina Jirotka, “From Data Archive to Ethical Labyrinth,” <i>Qualitative Research</i> 9, no. 3 (2009): 292.)) citing ethical concerns about appropriate use of the data as well as issues of confidentiality and consent. Even for researchers who support public access to data, these concerns cause them to question funders’ data-sharing requirements. A researcher in education who was preparing to apply for additional funding to create a longitudinal dataset by re-interviewing her previous respondents noted her uncertainty:\r\n<blockquote>I know that a lot of places when you apply for funding they want eventually for [data] to become public. I haven’t had to deal with it, but I’ve definitely thought about it. . . . I want to make sure to preserve the qualitative data because it’s very important to me . . . so it’s a concern for me personally to save it. . . . [But] once it’s public, or shared between other people, I would like to get help eventually on making the data itself more confidential because they are just interview transcripts which, you know, there are a lot of [confidentiality] issues with that, and that I would have to [make the data itself more confidential] before I shared it. . . . I don’t know if there are limits to the extent to which I can make it public or not. (1-04-100511)</blockquote>\r\nIn the context of making their data accessible, these confidentiality and consent negotiations are some of the most difficult issues for scholars to resolve before depositing their ethnographic materials in data repositories or archives. These issues are also most effectively addressed as early in a research project as possible, so that researchers can implement the necessary practices and protocols to insure that confidentiality and consent can be assured in the long term prior to data collection. As Charles Humphrey and his colleagues discuss, the integral involvement of archivists and data-curation specialists in the planning stages and throughout qualitative research projects greatly increases the quality of the data products and decreases ethical problems associated with deposition in repositories and archives. ((Charles K. Humphrey, Carole A. Estabrooks, Judy R. Norris, Jane E. Smith, and Kathryn L. Hesketh, “Archivist on Board: Contributions to the Research Team,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000).)) As they point out, this collaboration is beneficial to both researchers and archivists, since good archival preparation practices are often synonymous with good research practices. ((Humphrey et al., “Archivist on Board,” 5.))\r\n\r\nDespite efforts by organizations such as the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR) to foster this type of collaboration ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage.”)) and educate ethnographers in data curation and archival preparation practices, ((CoPAR has released a series of fourteen bulletins outlining specific issues involved in the preservation of anthropological materials and addressed to practicing anthropologists. These bulletins are available at <a href=\"http://copar.org/bulletins.htm\">http://copar.org/bulletins.htm</a>. Unfortunately, since most of these bulletins were written in the late 1990s, many of the technology discussions are out of date. However, the conceptual discussions remain highly relevant.)) it appears that relatively few ethnographers seek out the assistance of archivists or data management specialists until after data collection is completed, unless funding requirements compelled them to do so. Of the ethnographers we interviewed, only two had consulted with data management services prior to the data collection phase of their research, both as a result of the NSF’s requirement that data-management plans be included in new funding proposals. Only one project had a systematic plan for depositing its ethnographic data in an archives, principally because this research was conducted as part of a very large and well-funded research initiative. This project had amassed some 40,000 pages of ethnographic fieldnotes, which were being preserved but not yet been shared publically. The researcher leading this project explained:\r\n<blockquote>It’s news to anthropologists that data should be made public. It’s not something that’s in their mindset. In fact they are appalled by it. . . . However, that [ethnographic] data was paid for using a million dollars of federal money and I’m using it with some of my grad students who are essentially doing secondary analysis of fieldnotes. I think that in the long run that data should be made public, and could be, but very carefully. . . . I don’t think that’s a problem . . . my guess is we’re going to get there. . . . A very new area now is “what do you do with electronic fieldnotes?” and “can those be made available for researchers?” If nothing else, I think this archive of fieldnotes . . .in 20 or 30 years could be a great historical source and should be preserved on that basis. So, I would like to see us work out ways of carefully having anthropological and ethnographic data made public too. (5-11-103011)</blockquote>\r\nIn working out the procedures for sharing these materials, this researcher went on to emphasize the paramount importance of protecting research participants’ confidentiality. Indeed, all of the ethnographers cited confidentiality concerns as one of the foremost issues that they would need to discuss and resolve with an archivist or repository manager before depositing their materials, making it perhaps the most critical area for developing collaborative practices between researchers, data curators, and archivists.\r\n\r\n<b>The Confidentiality Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nThe ethics statements of both the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association require researchers to protect the confidentiality of their respondents (although the AAA statement asserts that expectations of credit should also be addressed). ((ASA, Code of Ethics, 11; AAA, Statement on Ethics (Part 3), 7.)) Protecting research participants’ confidentiality is routinely an explicit promise within social science research, and is an almost universally assumed requirement of IRBs when reviewing research proposals. Setting aside the research participant’s potential moral right to authorship as discussed above, the nature of ethnographic research often renders the promise of confidentiality problematic, if not outright impossible. As Zachary Schrag observes, maintaining the confidentiality of fieldwork sites and research participants discussed in publications has been a perennial problem for social science researchers, as details necessary to make ethnographic and other fieldwork-based writing meaningful often simultaneously make these places and people identifiable, especially to people familiar with the location or topic. ((Zachary M. Schrag, <i>Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009</i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 15.)) Increasing confidentiality protections almost always come at the cost of decreasing the amount of contextual information included for the ethnography’s audience, and can effectively prevent data from being deposited in an archives or repository (or sometimes even collected). A sociologist recounted the difficulties he encountered on one project:\r\n<blockquote>I wanted to do life histories with priests [in central Pennsylvania], and part of the problem was . . . we got into a situation where people might tell me things about their personal lives that are sort of not confidential in the IRB sense but that might be upsetting to their congregations—like I talked to one priest who had been married three times, where if the congregation had known about that they would have been very upset. There’s nothing illegal about it; this person’s not shy about telling that, but it could have been damaging. But I had the sense that . . . if I went around and did these interviews, I didn’t want to destroy the data because I thought they had some historical importance. . . . [The IRB said,] “and when you get done with this study if you’re not going to destroy the data you have to store it in an archive for 50 years, and I checked with [university] archives and they said, “we’re not going to store anything like that.” . . . I wanted to preserve the data, but there was no way to do it. . . . I actually quit the project [because the IRB made it impossible to do]. (2-13-111411)</blockquote>\r\nWhile protecting research participants’ privacy can be difficult, even in carefully prepared and edited publications, the nature of ethnographic materials makes them especially difficult to confidentially preserve over time. Audio and video recordings present obvious confidentiality problems by capturing a respondents’ voice or image, ((For a discussion of the extreme difficulty of archiving video and audio data anonymously, see Louise Corti, Annette Day, and Gill Backhouse, “Confidentiality and Informed Consent: Issues for Consideration in the Preservation of and Provision of Access to Qualitative Data Archives,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000): 4.4c, <a href=\"http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1024\">http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1024</a>.)) but even interview transcripts can be problematic. A common practice in archiving ethnographic materials is to make attempts to remove potentially identifying information from archived transcripts. However, even these “anonymized” transcripts often still contain personal details that allow the possible identification of research participants. For example, in the interviews conducted for this study, participants regularly discussed their discipline and research interests. Coupled with the names of the universities where the research was conducted—which are contained in all of our research proposals and publications—this seemingly innocuous information would probably render any of our participants identifiable with a simple web search if the full interview transcripts were released. This might not seem like a significant risk for scholars describing projects that they routinely discuss publically, but depending on the other details contained in the transcript it might also be embarrassing or potentially damaging (for example, comments about university administrators, other colleagues, etc.). As is often the case with qualitative research, removing these contextual details would diminish, if not destroy, the usefulness of these data to future researchers—the ostensible audience for these materials. Unfortunately, each piece of contextual detail retained about a research participant to aid in data interpretation simultaneously creates more potential for identification.\r\n\r\nGiven technological advances, removing all conceivably identifying details might still be insufficient to guarantee that transcripts are rendered anonymous. In fact, anonymizing transcripts may soon no longer be technically possible. Arvind Narayana and his colleagues have demonstrated that it is possible to accurately identify anonymous online authors up to 20 percent of the time based on writing style alone, given a sufficient corpus of example texts. ((A. Narayanan, H. Paskov, N. Z. Gong, J. Bethencourt, E. Stefanov, E. C. R. Shin, and D. Song, “On the Feasibility of Internet-scale Author Identification,” Security and Privacy (SP), 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (May 20-23, 2012): 301, <a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6234420\">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6234420</a>.)) As more and more content moves online, one can only assume that these techniques will become more robust, so that identifying a participant from the vocabulary or speech patterns in a transcript may eventually become a matter of applying the correct software. These realities set up even the most well-intentioned researchers to fail to meet the obligations required by IRBs and the agreements made with their respondents.\r\n\r\nWhen archiving ethnographic materials, confidentiality can also be equally important for protecting the researcher. This is especially true for the archiving of fieldnotes, which are profoundly personal for many ethnographic researchers. Researchers are often quite ambivalent about these data, regularly describing feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, or embarrassment about their work and what it reveals about them as scholars. ((Jackson, “I Am a Fieldnote,” 10-12.)) When talking about her data collection process, an anthropologist in our study observed:\r\n<blockquote>That’s the thing with fieldnotes, you never show them to anyone . . . as long as it works for you . . . it’s not like you have to show it to someone else and have them make sense of it, which is kind of a shame because it would be nice to have data in formats where people could, you know, sort of, archive that information. (2-16-120211)</blockquote>\r\nIn his study of fieldnote practices, Jean Jackson observes, “Many respondents point out that the highly personal nature of fieldnotes influences the extent of one’s willingness to share them: ‘Fieldnotes can reveal how worthless your work was, the lacunae, your linguistic incompetence, your not being made a blood brother, your childish temper.’” ((Ibid., 22.)) Anthropologist Simon Ottenberg describes his fieldnotes similarly, “[W]hen I was younger, I would have felt uncomfortable at the thought of someone else using my notes, whether I was alive or dead—they are so much a private thing, so much an aspect of personal field experience, so much a private language, so much part of my ego, my childhood [as an anthropologist], and my personal maturity.” ((Simon Ottenberg, “Thirty Years of Fieldnotes: Changing Relationships to the Text,” in <i>Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology</i>, ed. Roger Sanjek (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1990), 153.)) This attachment and ambivalence may make researchers reluctant to turn over control of their notes to an archives—especially one that has the purpose of making materials available publically on the internet. This professional practice not only makes it very difficult to substantiate or verify ethnographers’ data, suggesting a need for ethnographers to develop more proactive and sensitive data-sharing procedures, but also creates a situation where ethnographic materials are saved, but with inadequate plans for preservation. Zeitlyn notes, “Paradoxically most anthropologists want neither to destroy their field material nor archive it.” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471.)) So, too, with our study: almost no one had made plans for their data beyond the short term, let alone the final dispensation of their materials at the end of their career or after their death.\r\n\r\nWhile archivists regularly assure scholars that the papers of “ordinary” or not-famous researchers are sometimes the most valuable, ((Catherine Fowler, \"Ethical Considerations,\" in Silverman and Parezo, <i>Preserving the Anthropological Record</i>, 64-65; Robert Leopold, “The Second Life of Ethnographic Fieldnotes,” <i>Ateliers d\'anthropologie</i> 32 (2008): 4.)) researchers themselves are often unconvinced. Many of our respondents had trouble imagining the potential audience for their data and primary materials, although one Environmental Studies researcher shared data on graffiti images she collected during fieldwork following a particular ethnic conflict event. The data were not directly related to her primary research questions, but another scholar used them in a Master’s thesis (and possibly in a future dissertation). Nevertheless, doubts about future usefulness contribute to researchers’ reluctance to undertake sometimes arduous and time-consuming data preservation and annotation tasks, such as redacting confidential information, and to neglect advance planning for the eventual archiving of their materials, such as assuring adequate consent procedures. This is potentially a key area of advocacy for data curators and archivists, who are well positioned to both educate researchers in the importance of preserving primary data for future generations of researchers, even if its immediate value is not apparent, and to provide tools such as cross-indexes and finding aids that make these data more useful and comparable. ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage,” 301-305. See also Louise Corti, “Progress and Problems of Preserving and Providing Access to Qualitative Data for Social Research—The International Picture of an Emerging Culture,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000): 10.1.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Consent Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nBoth IRBs and disciplinary societies’ ethics statements emphasize the importance and necessity of obtaining informed consent from research participants. Given the possibility of archiving materials indefinitely, and especially for web publication, obtaining fully informed consent may be a futile endeavor. Libby Bishop points out that because researchers cannot adequately speculate on all the uses in which data might be employed, explicit consent is “logically impossible.” ((Bishop, “Ethical Sharing,” 263.)) However, Bishop also observes that this should not paralyze researchers from depositing their materials in archives, since consent for the primary research activity is in itself partial and no researcher can fully explain all information about any research project. ((Ibid., 264.)) Zeitlyn makes this point in another way, noting that cultural differences may also limit the ability of a researcher to obtain consent in a way that is recognizable to IRBs: “Once material is archived, it may be consulted by unknown others who might use it in novel ways. . . . Can a researcher obtain meaningful prior informed consent if the uses to which the material might be put in the future cannot be explained?” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471; see also Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 147.))\r\n\r\nWhile Bishop suggests responding to this problem by providing examples of how archived research might be reused or by obtaining open-ended consent, ((Bishop, “Ethical Sharing,” 263.)) others suggest a more comprehensive approach that understands consent as a process rather than a one-time event. ((Carusi and Jirotka, “From Data Archive,” 294; Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 146; AAA, Code of Ethics, III.A.4.)) This approach presents significant difficulties when applied to the lifecycle of an entire ethnographic research project, especially once data and other fieldwork materials are deposited in an archives for the purpose of long-term access and preservation. If appropriate consent for archiving is not obtained at the outset of a project, or is sought when new uses are discovered for materials, contacting participants to authorize this usage can be extremely difficult and costly for ethnographers, if not outright impossible. Furthermore, a consent model that requires re-contacting participants also requires confidentiality or anonymization procedures to be reversible, meaning that the researcher must retain records that can link individuals to the materials about them. Retaining contact information or other identifying records is not best practice for assuring participant confidentiality, and in the case of truly sensitive research, doing so unnecessarily maintains records that could be subject to subpoena or otherwise compromised. For example, in 2012 the US Department of Justice issued a subpoena in connection with a murder investigation on behalf of Great Britain for access to oral history interviews conducted with Irish Republican Army and Loyalist paramilitary members as part of “The Belfast Project,” archived at Boston College’s Burns Library. While the project’s confidentiality agreement promised interviewees that these materials would be embargoed until their death, this guarantee was subject to exceptions required by American law; a point that may have been unclear to the research participants. Both Boston College and the researchers are presently contesting the subpoenas, but the initial rulings by a federal district court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals have found that the subpoenas are legal. ((The Society of American Archivists Oral History Section maintains a webpage summarizing the case and providing links to relevant documents at <a href=\"http://www2.archivists.org/groups/oral-history-section/the-belfast-case-information-for-saa-members\">http://www2.archivists.org/groups/oral-history-section/the-belfast-case-information-for-saa-members</a>.)) As this case demonstrates, whenever identifying information exists, there is a possibility that its disclosure can be compelled. From the point of view of research-participant confidentiality, it is therefore preferable to destroy materials that enable identification or re-contact as soon as possible after research is complete.\r\n\r\nSince anonymization is an all-or-nothing decision that must be irreversible, even for the researcher, if it is to be effective, ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471.)) in order to make consent an ongoing process, one must also accept that the data cannot be made fully anonymous. The question then becomes how researchers can meaningfully extend consent decisions to include archives without rendering them unmanageable for their administrators or unnecessarily diminishing their analytical value. ((See Carusi and Jirotka, “From Data Archive,” 294-95.)) Balancing the need to maintain appropriate levels of confidentiality with the administrative costs is a critical area for collaboration between researchers, archivists, and data specialists. Fully anonymizing datasets is probably neither necessary, nor cost effective, for relatively low-risk materials, ((See Corti, Day, and Backhouse,\" Confidentiality and Informed Consent,\" 4.4, on the expense of creating anonymized archives.)) but both the researcher and the archivists must fully understand the potential risk scenarios before these decisions can be made, particularly in an environment where privacy protections are an increasing concern for research participants. While discussing the challenges he faces in complying with funder’s public access requirements, a sociologist observed:\r\n<blockquote>Clearly the biggest problem is the problem of protection of privacy. The concern of privacy has been ramped up tremendously over the last 10 or 15 years, and the process of getting permission to analyze data can be difficult, but a trend in social science data is to include more and more information that\'s sensitive. . . . I think the field is trying to now establish appropriate levels of protection for particular kinds of data and is trying to balance this problem of privacy with public access. And it is a challenge and it’s going to require some new modes of doing things. (5-11-103111)</blockquote>\r\nDeveloping these modes of work and processes of consent requires not only the participation of researchers and scholarly societies, but also intensive cooperation with data management specialists, technologists, and archivists. ((ICPSR’s “Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving Phase 5: Preparing Data for Sharing” provides a model for these processes. See <a href=\"http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/guide/chapter5.html\">http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/guide/chapter5.html</a>.))\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusions and Recommendations</b>\r\n\r\nResearchers and archivists alike face tremendous challenges in effectively preserving ethnographic research data and providing meaningful access for researchers and other stakeholders while simultaneously protecting sensitive data. In order to be effective, data sharing, confidentiality, and consent imperatives all require the active participation and investment of researchers themselves. Decisions about access, issues of authorship attribution, adequate consent, and the level of confidentially required cannot be made without the input of someone who is deeply knowledgeable about the contexts in which the research took place. However, as we have seen, none of these decision processes necessarily end at the moment when the materials are deposited in an archives or repository, and a researcher’s ethical obligation to his or her research participants does not end once he or she has transferred responsibility for their preservation. This sense of responsibility makes many researchers reluctant to relinquish control over their ethnographic materials, lest changing political, social, or cultural conditions necessitates a more restrictive approach to data access than was initially required.\r\n\r\nFor example, an Environmental Studies researcher noted that currently her data does not present much risk to her respondents:\r\n<blockquote>Most of the data I’ve collected really have limited privacy issues or any kind of harm that could come to respondents. There are some topics that I’ve looked at, that depending on, when—you know, timeliness—at what point these were published, that identifying information could be problematic. In [central Asian country] it’s a lot easier—at least currently—the situation for my topics isn’t dangerous. That doesn’t mean it can’t be in the future and if I extended the research to neighboring countries then I would probably have some more serious confidentiality issues. (2-12-111011)</blockquote>\r\nIf the political situation for her respondents changed, however, this researcher might be ethically obligated to change the access conditions of any materials that she had archived, even if her consent procedures had addressed this eventuality. Repositories for ethnographic materials must be careful to include procedures to respond to these types of situations in their donor agreements, and researchers should discuss the unique qualities of ethnographic materials prior to their deposit. As Parezo points out, “it is unethical and unreasonable to expect the archival community to guess which fieldnotes contain sensitive information and what are reasonable use restrictions.” ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage,” 285.))\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, preparing materials for deposit into an archives is often a low priority for ethnographers for a variety of reasons, and the archiving of ethnographic data is further hindered by a persistent lack of training. While comprehensive historical review is beyond the scope of this article, Silverman already noted the problem of a lack of formal training in data collection and management practices among anthropologists almost 20 years ago, ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 6.)) before the rise of many of the complications that the expansion of digital data collection created. Almost none of the scholars we interviewed reported that data curation or stewardship training was part of their graduate curriculum, and data management was usually only addressed narrowly in relation to methodological approaches and problems. The ethical and practical difficulties involved in managing and preserving large amounts of research data were rarely addressed, with most researchers acquiring the skills they needed via trial and error. ((Jahnke, Asher, and Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>.)) None of the scholars interviewed during this study expressed satisfaction with their level of expertise in data management, and few had access to individuals who could provide knowledgeable guidance. While it would be preferable for graduate curricula to include this type of training, it seems unlikely that this change will occur in the near term. It is, therefore, likely that archivists and data specialists will need to provide this training, preferably by developing relationships with ethnographic researchers as early as possible in the research process.\r\n\r\nThe lack of confidence in their data-management training compounds researchers’ apprehension about the ethical issues contained in their data. Researchers are naturally—and rightfully—conservative about the potential risks in sharing data, especially if they are not convinced they can protect their respondents’ confidentiality, or that they have obtained appropriate consent—issues that the difficulties of cross-cultural communication make more complex. Without such assurances that these ethical imperatives can be addressed, many researchers are unlikely to invest in archiving their materials. “In many cases, their desire to avoid the ethical risks of inappropriate data release may outweigh the costs of potential data loss.” ((Ibid., 17.))\r\n\r\nBecause of these interrelated concerns, it is critical that the archival and data curation systems available to ethnographic researchers have multiple and fine-grained levels of access and privacy controls. Tools must be developed that can appropriately manage confidential data and that allow researchers, working in conjunction with their respondents, to exercise control over their data, administer who has access to it, and account for culturally specific restrictions on data use. ((Ibid., 17-18.)) One example of a system attempting to address these requirements is the Murkutu content management system (<a href=\"http://www.mukurtu.org/\">http://www.mukurtu.org/</a>), which makes cultural protocols a fundamental part of access to materials. This allows for the easy creation of fine-grained and culturally appropriate user groups with specifically defined usage rights, and it is being developed in cooperation with indigenous communities. ((A list of community groups and organizations participating in the Mukurtu project is available at <a href=\"http://www.mukurtu.org/community.html\">http://www.mukurtu.org/community.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nBecause the nature of ethnographic materials makes them potentially subject to ongoing and evolving dilemmas of confidentiality and consent, archivists and data managers should understand that these materials may require ongoing curation, preferably through processes and procedures that incorporate researchers in a collaborative and meaningful way. Although many researchers would welcome the ability to more easily share their data, particularly in collaborative projects and in response to data-sharing requirements, they are almost universally resistant to any arrangement in which they would relinquish control over access to the data. As one anthropologist described:\r\n<blockquote>People don’t hesitate, at all, to share data with collaborators that they trust. … If you provide a mechanism for collaboration, even if it’s just Google Docs or something, you know, people share data easily and freely. It’s when it becomes an anonymous process that they seem to get balky. (1-02-100511)</blockquote>\r\nThe goal of making materials publically available online, then, will require archival systems and processes that are cognizant of the complex social relationships embedded within ethnographic materials, not only between the researcher and his or her respondents, but also between and among the many stakeholders in ethnographic data. The development of additional policies, ethical guidelines, and best practices by disciplinary organizations, funding agencies, universities, and cultural institutions could further aid researchers and archivists in navigating the ethical dilemmas contained in the archival process.\r\n\r\nBecause much ethnographic data is collected by individuals in relatively small and often idiosyncratic datasets, it is especially vulnerable to loss due to benign neglect or lack or resources, even if the data are historically unique. A sociologist described one such vulnerable dataset:\r\n<blockquote>We did life histories of 45 people in a [church] congregation in [central Pennsylvania town]. . . . It’s probably the only body of material on a single congregation of that depth and complexity that exists, and I’m just too lazy to have figured out what to do with it and write it up and everything, but you could imagine somewhere somebody who wants to do research on congregations would find this incredibly valuable. But what’s going to happen to it [in the long term]? And what’s going to happen to it is, the copies I have will end up in a trash can, and my computer hard drive will eventually crash or get outmoded or get erased, and that’ll be the end of it [if there isn’t a place to archive it]. (2-13-111411)</blockquote>\r\nIn order to prevent these losses, data management specialists and archivists must specifically curate these materials. They must also build relationships with ethnographers to resolve the unique ethical dilemmas these data present and the uneasy tensions between researchers’ desire to share data publically and obligations to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the individuals and communities they study.\r\n\r\nFinally, despite the acknowledged importance and value of archival materials to the disciplines and future researchers, academic rewards systems offer very little payoff for the work that goes into making ethnographic materials available, and ethnographic researchers are often under-resourced in the funding, time, and personnel support needed for preparing materials for archiving. ((The NSF’s recent decision to list datasets as one of the research products to be included in the section of its grant proposals where researchers describe their qualifications does suggest, however, that the current rewards system may gradually be changing (see <a href=\"http://nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp\">http://nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp</a>).)) Archivists must therefore work to make archival systems and the development of archival processes and policies as straightforward for researchers as possible, ideally assisting in integrating the development of metadata and other secondary materials (for example, codebooks, explanatory materials, finding aids, and ontologies) necessary to archiving and ensuring the long-term usefulness of primary data as early in the research process as possible. Likewise, funding agencies should improve funding for long-term data management, preservation, and curatorial services, either directly or via guidelines to institutions for recouping indirect costs, especially when the grant mandates archiving or public data accessibility. By providing these supports, archivists and funders would greatly assist researchers in responding to the imperatives of providing access to data and assuring the confidentiality and consent of their respondents, as well as resolving the ethical dilemmas contained in their data, thereby helping assure the preservation of irreplaceable ethnographic information.','Curating the Ethnographic Moment','','publish','open','open','','curating-the-ethnographic-moment','','','2013-07-06 23:24:04','2013-07-06 23:24:04','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4698',0,'post','',0),(4699,3,'2013-06-17 22:55:10','2013-06-17 22:55:10','','Curating the Ethnographic Moment','','inherit','open','open','','4698-revision','','','2013-06-17 22:55:10','2013-06-17 22:55:10','',4698,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4698-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4700,3,'2013-06-17 22:56:35','2013-06-17 22:56:35','','Andrew Asher','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-andrew-asher','','','2013-07-10 19:45:48','2013-07-10 19:45:48','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4700',0,'guest-author','',0),(4701,3,'2013-06-17 22:58:54','2013-06-17 22:58:54','','Lori M. Jahnke','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-lori-m-jahnke','','','2013-07-10 19:46:57','2013-07-10 19:46:57','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4701',0,'guest-author','',0),(4718,3,'2013-06-17 23:52:26','2013-06-17 23:52:26','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nBy vastly increasing the volume and types of data that field researchers can collect, digital technologies have reshaped ethnographers’ relationship with their accumulated research data and materials. Whereas paper-based fieldnotes and other physical ethnographic records are often deposited in repositories and made accessible only after a scholar’s death, the emergence of born-digital materials has created and enhanced possibilities for rapidly sharing data, not only with other researchers but also with research subjects and the public at large via online repositories. While many researchers support the principal of public access to research data, making this data available online can compound the ethical dilemmas ethnographers face. Ethnographers often find themselves torn between contradictory imperatives to share data publically and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the individuals and communities they study. ((L. Jahnke, A. Asher, and S.D.C. Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>, CLIR Publication #154 (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2012).))\r\n\r\nUnlike experimental data, ethnographic data, by definition, are not reproducible. ((See Sydel Silverman, “Introduction,” in <i>Preserving the Anthropological Record</i>, ed. Sydel Silverman and Nancy J. Parezo (New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1995), 1.)) Ethnographic fieldwork is inextricably linked to a particular time, place, and society, making the primary data of ethnographers unique and unrecoverable. For this reason, today’s ethnographic fieldnotes are particularly important to preserve as tomorrow’s historical records; they document observations of places and cultures that—because they are in a constant state of change—will never exist in the same configuration again. Since ethnographic fieldnotes provide the empirical basis for researchers’ public authority, it would likewise seem logical for fieldnotes and other ethnographic materials to be made available for verification purposes in online repositories as soon as possible after the publication of research reports, articles, or monographs.\r\n\r\nHowever, several characteristics of ethnographic materials cause them to be particularly difficult to make publically accessible. First, many ethnographic researchers are reluctant to share their data for personal reasons. Ethnographic fieldnotes are intensely personal documents for many researchers, who often view them as extremely valuable for their own work, but doubt that they would be useful to other researchers without the accompanying contexts and experiences in which the materials were collected. Secondly, ethnographic materials also routinely contain private, confidential, or culturally sensitive information about both research subjects and the researcher, which often requires time-consuming or costly procedures to redact, and may limit or prevent public dissemination and secondary analyses of the data. Finally, ethnographic materials are regularly collected in contexts with varying or conflicting cultural standards for consent and data use, raising ethical questions about the efficacy of archiving these materials. For these reasons, balancing the multiple imperatives of data sharing, informed consent, and confidentiality for research participants is a fundamental issue for ethnographers preparing to deposit their materials in an archives, and the ethics surrounding these decisions was one of the most common and recurring themes in the interviews conducted for the study we present here.\r\n\r\nUsing data gathered during the 2011-2012 academic year in a qualitative study of researchers’ data management and curation practices, ((This study was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and managed by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). See Jahnke, Asher, and Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>.)) this article examines the practical and ethical dilemmas ethnographers face as they work with diverse research materials across varying, and sometimes conflicting, cultural standards for consent and data use. By emphasizing the everyday practices of researchers, this study sought to gain a holistic understanding of the workflows involved in the creation, management, and preservation of research data in order to better comprehend researchers’ unmet needs within data curation processes. Twenty-three researchers from varying ranks working in a variety of social science disciplines at five universities ((Penn State University, Lehigh University, Bucknell University, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Pennsylvania.)) participated in interviews for this study (see Table 1), which focused on how researchers collect and analyze data, how they manage and preserve these data, and what training they have had in data-curation practices.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4704\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"273\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/asher-jahnke_remixed_3_TABLE.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4704\" alt=\"Table 1. Rank and academic discipline of the study participants.  *The nine starred participants conducted significant amounts of ethnographic research.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/asher-jahnke_remixed_3_TABLE-273x300.jpg\" width=\"273\" height=\"300\" /></a> Table 1. Rank and academic discipline of the study participants. *The nine starred participants conducted significant amounts of ethnographic research.[/caption]\r\n\r\nAlthough scholars across many disciplines were grappling with the ethical and philosophical problems of data sharing—often in the absence of coherent policies for data archiving and release from funding agencies, professional organizations, or their employing institutions—this article will focus on the experiences of nine of these researchers who conducted ethnography as part of their data collection. Because ethnographic research involves a complex social interplay between researchers and respondents, often from differing cultural contexts, the management of these data presents unique difficulties for researchers who usually have little or no training in preservation, curation, or data-stewardship strategies. This article will examine how researchers navigate these difficulties when dealing with the two principal types of ethnographic data: fieldnotes—the diverse array of notes, writings, and other materials upon which researchers base their ethnographies ((Jean E. Jackson, “I Am a Fieldnote,” in <i>Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology</i>, ed. Roger Sanjek (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 1.))—and the research artifacts, such as transcripts and audio or video recordings, produced from more formal, direct interactions with respondents.\r\n\r\n<b>The Data Sharing Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nFunding agencies—especially agencies administering public funds—are increasingly requiring qualitative research data to be made publically available. Since 1995, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)—a major source of funding for qualitative research in the United Kingdom—has required its awardees to archive their data as a condition of funding. ((See O. Parry and N. S. Mauthner, “Whose Data Are They Anyway?” <i>Sociology</i> 38, no. 1 (2004): 140-41.)) Similarly, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other US funding agencies (e.g. National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities) have begun to require formal data-management plans detailing how researchers will meet data-sharing expectations. Our assumption is that this trend will continue as both public and private funders seek maximum returns on their investment in research. While not always explicitly required, the goal of many of these policies is for research data to be deposited in an appropriate repository with online access for both other researchers and the public. For ethnographers, who are often accustomed to retaining exclusive rights over their fieldnotes and other materials, this can represent an uncomfortable shift in research practice, even when these repositories take into account the particular confidentiality and consent demands inherent to ethnographic research (discussed further below) and implement appropriate safeguards such as embargoing or redacting sensitive materials.\r\n\r\nIn principal, the ethnographic researchers we interviewed for this study saw data preservation and sharing as positive values, even if they were not sure about how to preserve and share data or who would potentially use the materials. When asked about what parts of her research data she would like to preserve, one anthropologist explained:\r\n\r\nThat’s the thing—If you keep anything long enough it becomes interesting. . . . For myself . . . I would love to archive everything and maybe put some kind of time stamp on personal information where it can’t be released for some amount of time. It’s so hard to know what people in the future would be interested in. . . . I try to keep data in such a way that hopefully it would be comprehensible to someone else if they were willing to work through my crazy software. . . . If I had somebody’s fieldnotes from 100 years ago from my field site, I’d be totally fascinated by that, so you never know what people are going to be interested in. (2-16-120211) ((The number in parentheses is the participant identification number; please refer to Table 1.))\r\n\r\nThe scholarly societies to which many of these researchers belong also broadly support data sharing and potential reuse. The most recent 2012 revision on the American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) ethics statement explicitly states that it is the obligation of the researcher to preserve records and make results accessible, “Anthropologists have an ethical responsibility for ensuring the integrity, preservation, and protection of their work” and, the “results of anthropological research should be disseminated in a timely fashion” provided it is not “at the expense of protecting confidentiality.” ((American Anthropological Association (AAA), <i>Statement on Ethics: Principals of Professional Responsibility</i>, 2012, <a href=\"http://www.aaanet.org/profdev/ethics/upload/Statement-on-Ethics-Principles-of-Professional-Responsibility.pdf\">http://www.aaanet.org/profdev/ethics/upload/Statement-on-Ethics-Principles-of-Professional-Responsibility.pdf</a>.)) The previous 1998 version also addressed data access and preservation, but not as systematically or forcefully. ((This version was slightly revised in 2009 to make minor changes to some of the statement’s language. Since this revision did not alter the structure or main points of the statement, we continue to refer the 1998 version (as does the AAA’s ethics website). American Anthropological Association, Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association, Statement, 1998, B.4-5, C1.)) Likewise, the American Sociological Association sets similar expectations in the data sharing section of its Code of Ethics. ((American Sociological Association, Code of Ethics, 1999, 13.05.))\r\n\r\nThe benefits of data archiving and sharing for scholarly disciplines and the advancement of knowledge are straightforward: preserved materials can be subjected to secondary analysis, unnecessary duplication of research can be minimized, historical records can be maintained, and, importantly, scholars can independently evaluate the validity of published results by consulting the primary data. ((Libby Bishop, “Ethical Sharing and Reuse of Qualitative Data,” <i>Australian Journal of Social Issues</i> 44, no. 3 (2009): 266.)) Furthermore, online repositories might enable new forms of scholarship and writing. For the first time, materials preserved and made accessible online have made it feasible to make publically available the corpus of primary texts that form the basis of support for ethnographic argumentation. While a non-digitized, paper-based collection could also serve this purpose, it is unlikely that more than a handful of interested readers of a particular ethnography would physically travel to the repository to examine the documents. Repositories that make resources available online fundamentally change this dynamic. In <i>Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive, </i>Johannes Fabian explores these possibilities by conducting what he describes as an experiment with “writing ethnography ‘in the presence of texts’” located in a publically accessible online repository. ((Johannes Fabian, <i>Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive</i> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), vii.)) Fabian terms this genre of writing “commentary,” a text-centered form of ethnography that assumes his reader can simultaneously consult a primary text for her or himself via an online archive. ((Ibid., 9-13.))\r\n\r\nThe text Fabian utilizes is a conversation he and Kahenga Mukonkwa Michel had about a ceremony Kahenga conducted at Fabian’s home in Zaire in 1974. ((Ibid., 3.)) The transcription, translation, and an audio excerpt of the discussion are now housed in the Archives of Popular Swahili on the website of the Language and Popular Culture in Africa project. ((Johannes. Fabian, “‘Magic and Modernity’: A Conversation with a Herbalist and Practitioner of Magic,” trans. Johannes Fabian, <i>Archives of Popular Swahili</i> 7 (2005), <a href=\"http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol7/kahengatext.html#introduction\">http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol7/kahengatext.html#introduction</a>.)) Fabian argues that the repository of documents serves an important epistemological purpose by “mediat[ing] between . . . events, the presentation of evidence, and our aims and claims to produce anthropological knowledge.” ((Fabian, “Magic,” 123.)) By allowing the reader of an ethnography to interrogate and evaluate the primary data on which it is based, the archive reveals how ethnographies are composed through the confrontation between the researcher, his or her respondents, and the texts they co-create. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography</i>, 54. One does wonder, however, why Fabian considered a traditionally published monograph necessary to this project, rather than simply including it in the archive. Given that his book annotates the online texts using paragraph numbers that assume a specific online layout, it would seem more effective to have created hyperlinks between the commentary and the primary materials. In this way, the “experiment” seems incomplete.))\r\n\r\nFabian’s instructive experiment notwithstanding, for many researchers the practice of making ethnographic materials available online is fraught. Ethnography requires researchers to occupy a methodological position that mediates and translates between multiple cultural contexts. This positioning leads to a number of difficulties for ethnographers as they attempt to meet their obligations to multiple constituencies—including funders, cultural institutions, and the researcher’s employing university, in addition to the individuals and communities the researcher works with—while negotiating the processes of placing materials in archives and repositories. When working with human subjects, ethical pitfalls abound, and often ethnographers must resolve contradictions between these groups.\r\n\r\nAt a very basic level, policies requiring access to research data may “directly [contradict] some ethnic groups’ cultural traditions concerning secrecy and controlled access to information.” ((David Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives: Possible Futures and Contingent Pasts. Archives as Anthropological Surrogates,” <i>Annual Review of Anthropology</i> 41, no. 1 (2012): 472, doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145721. See also G. Isaac, “Whose Idea Was This?: Museums, Replicas, and the Reproduction of Knowledge,” <i>Current Anthropology</i> 52, no. 2 (2011) 211-233.)) For example, an anthropologist might gain access to knowledge that is secret, or restricted for cultural or social reasons. During his fieldwork with the Saramaka, a group in Suriname who descended from escaped African slaves, Richard Price gained knowledge about the “Old-Time People” who experienced the war for liberation from roughly 1680 to 1762. ((Richard Price, <i>First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People</i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 5-6. For additional examples and a discussion of cross-cultural differences in relation to access to knowledge see Nancy J. Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage: CoPAR, Anthropological Records, and the Archival Community,” <i>The American Archivist </i>62 (1999): 285, note 24.)) The Saramaka consider knowledge about this time and these people powerful, dangerous, and restricted. Price struggled with the ethical implications of publishing a book within a different cultural system that uses this knowledge as its primary subject. ((Price, <i>First Time, </i>21-23.)) Price notes that by putting the information in a public document, he potentially “deprives [the] author of control (except perhaps via the language in which [the book] appears) over [his or her] audience.” ((Ibid., 23.)) This problem is compounded exponentially once information is made available online (as Price’s book now is, at least in part, in Google Books) by removing even the physical restrictions of a bound monograph.\r\n\r\nInformation need not be “exotic” to create publishing difficulties for ethnographers. For example, an ethnographer working in a corporate, government, or other institutional setting in the United States might be privy to proprietary or confidential information about a product or service that must be ethically and legally protected. A researcher in environmental engineering explained her process when conducting interviews:\r\n\r\nAnother big concern is confidentiality because I record those conversations, and then there’s kind of an extended period of time in which I allow those who I’ve talked with to redact parts of our conversation if they’ve talked about things they would prefer to remain private. . . I’m talking to several companies about the development and production of their technologies and so there’s some proprietary information that comes up and that’s really the main concern. (5-20-020212)\r\n\r\nIndeed, accidental release of this type of information might put the researcher at as much legal risk as her respondents.\r\n\r\nWhen preparing to preserve ethnographic data, issues of ownership and authorship are also not always straightforward, and it is imperative that researchers communicate and address these potential problems with archivists, data curators, and repository and digital collection managers before depositing ethnographic materials. For example, consent forms for interviews might not clearly state who holds the copyright or who has a license to use the recording or transcripts, potentially leading to confusion over the legal status of these materials and making it more difficult for a researcher to transfer materials to an archives. Intellectual property and copyright are themselves culturally specific concepts, and a legal right to dispose of or deposit materials as a researcher sees fit does not equal an ethical right to do so. The people providing information, the funders, the institution that employs the researcher, and the community in which the researcher works all have a moral interest in the disposition of the data. ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 4; Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 142.)) Parry and Mauthner go so far as to say, “[B]ecause the construction of qualitative data is a joint endeavor between respondent and researcher, both parties should retain authorship/ownership rights over the data,” which creates “practical, legal and ethical implications for archiving and re-use.” ((Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 141.))\r\n\r\nSome researchers, including Fabian, argue that since ethnographers and their respondents are joint agents in creating ethnographic materials, both parties should be named to acknowledge their contributions. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography, </i>16-17.)) However, naming respondents as authors or contributors contradicts an ethnographer’s imperative to protect the confidentiality of their research participants, which is a basic standard required by most Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved research and by professional-ethics statements. While David Zeitlyn observes that “a default assumption that notes will be anonymized conflicts with an individual’s moral right to be recognized as the author of his or her words,” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 470.)) many, if not most, ethnographers would likely be uncomfortable naming their participants in almost any context, but especially in publically accessible online repositories. This is likely to hold true even if a researcher philosophically accepts that his or her authority to determine the level of sensitivity that the data require privileges the researcher’s position vis-à-vis his or her respondents. ((Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 148.))\r\n\r\nMany ethnographers thus understand themselves not so much as owners of their data, but rather as stewards or custodians of data that are produced by a complex set of relationships between researchers and respondents. ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 4-5.)) As the stewards of these data, researchers are often the de facto interpreters of the terms by which data are made available, choosing what and when to publish or deposit materials in repositories or archives. Despite his assertion that correspondents should be named, Fabian notes that he exercises this stewardship by attempting not to publish anything that might be dangerous or damaging to the people with whom he worked—a position that is probably made easier by the fact that the texts he is working with were already 30 years old when he transcribed and posted them on the web. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography, </i>16-17.)) Many researchers we interviewed adopted a similar “attitude of moral responsibility towards research participants, expressed in the way in which data are handled,” ((Annamaria Carusi and Marina Jirotka, “From Data Archive to Ethical Labyrinth,” <i>Qualitative Research</i> 9, no. 3 (2009): 292.)) citing ethical concerns about appropriate use of the data as well as issues of confidentiality and consent. Even for researchers who support public access to data, these concerns cause them to question funders’ data-sharing requirements. A researcher in education who was preparing to apply for additional funding to create a longitudinal dataset by re-interviewing her previous respondents noted her uncertainty:\r\n\r\nI know that a lot of places when you apply for funding they want eventually for [data] to become public. I haven’t had to deal with it, but I’ve definitely thought about it. . . . I want to make sure to preserve the qualitative data because it’s very important to me . . . so it’s a concern for me personally to save it. . . . [But] once it’s public, or shared between other people, I would like to get help eventually on making the data itself more confidential because they are just interview transcripts which, you know, there are a lot of [confidentiality] issues with that, and that I would have to [make the data itself more confidential] before I shared it. . . . I don’t know if there are limits to the extent to which I can make it public or not. (1-04-100511)\r\n\r\nIn the context of making their data accessible, these confidentiality and consent negotiations are some of the most difficult issues for scholars to resolve before depositing their ethnographic materials in data repositories or archives. These issues are also most effectively addressed as early in a research project as possible, so that researchers can implement the necessary practices and protocols to insure that confidentiality and consent can be assured in the long term prior to data collection. As Charles Humphrey and his colleagues discuss, the integral involvement of archivists and data-curation specialists in the planning stages and throughout qualitative research projects greatly increases the quality of the data products and decreases ethical problems associated with deposition in repositories and archives. ((Charles K. Humphrey, Carole A. Estabrooks, Judy R. Norris, Jane E. Smith, and Kathryn L. Hesketh, “Archivist on Board: Contributions to the Research Team,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000).)) As they point out, this collaboration is beneficial to both researchers and archivists, since good archival preparation practices are often synonymous with good research practices. ((Humphrey et al., “Archivist on Board,” 5.))\r\n\r\nDespite efforts by organizations such as the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR) to foster this type of collaboration ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage.”)) and educate ethnographers in data curation and archival preparation practices, ((CoPAR has released a series of fourteen bulletins outlining specific issues involved in the preservation of anthropological materials and addressed to practicing anthropologists. These bulletins are available at <a href=\"http://copar.org/bulletins.htm\">http://copar.org/bulletins.htm</a>. Unfortunately, since most of these bulletins were written in the late 1990s, many of the technology discussions are out of date. However, the conceptual discussions remain highly relevant.)) it appears that relatively few ethnographers seek out the assistance of archivists or data management specialists until after data collection is completed, unless funding requirements compelled them to do so. Of the ethnographers we interviewed, only two had consulted with data management services prior to the data collection phase of their research, both as a result of the NSF’s requirement that data-management plans be included in new funding proposals. Only one project had a systematic plan for depositing its ethnographic data in an archives, principally because this research was conducted as part of a very large and well-funded research initiative. This project had amassed some 40,000 pages of ethnographic fieldnotes, which were being preserved but not yet been shared publically. The researcher leading this project explained:\r\n\r\nIt’s news to anthropologists that data should be made public. It’s not something that’s in their mindset. In fact they are appalled by it. . . . However, that [ethnographic] data was paid for using a million dollars of federal money and I’m using it with some of my grad students who are essentially doing secondary analysis of fieldnotes. I think that in the long run that data should be made public, and could be, but very carefully. . . . I don’t think that’s a problem . . . my guess is we’re going to get there. . . . A very new area now is “what do you do with electronic fieldnotes?” and “can those be made available for researchers?” If nothing else, I think this archive of fieldnotes . . .in 20 or 30 years could be a great historical source and should be preserved on that basis. So, I would like to see us work out ways of carefully having anthropological and ethnographic data made public too. (5-11-103011)\r\n\r\nIn working out the procedures for sharing these materials, this researcher went on to emphasize the paramount importance of protecting research participants’ confidentiality. Indeed, all of the ethnographers cited confidentiality concerns as one of the foremost issues that they would need to discuss and resolve with an archivist or repository manager before depositing their materials, making it perhaps the most critical area for developing collaborative practices between researchers, data curators, and archivists.\r\n\r\n<b>The Confidentiality Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nThe ethics statements of both the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association require researchers to protect the confidentiality of their respondents (although the AAA statement asserts that expectations of credit should also be addressed). ((ASA, Code of Ethics, 11; AAA, Statement on Ethics (Part 3), 7.)) Protecting research participants’ confidentiality is routinely an explicit promise within social science research, and is an almost universally assumed requirement of IRBs when reviewing research proposals. Setting aside the research participant’s potential moral right to authorship as discussed above, the nature of ethnographic research often renders the promise of confidentiality problematic, if not outright impossible. As Zachary Schrag observes, maintaining the confidentiality of fieldwork sites and research participants discussed in publications has been a perennial problem for social science researchers, as details necessary to make ethnographic and other fieldwork-based writing meaningful often simultaneously make these places and people identifiable, especially to people familiar with the location or topic. ((Zachary M. Schrag, <i>Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009</i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 15.)) Increasing confidentiality protections almost always come at the cost of decreasing the amount of contextual information included for the ethnography’s audience, and can effectively prevent data from being deposited in an archives or repository (or sometimes even collected). A sociologist recounted the difficulties he encountered on one project:\r\n\r\nI wanted to do life histories with priests [in central Pennsylvania], and part of the problem was . . . we got into a situation where people might tell me things about their personal lives that are sort of not confidential in the IRB sense but that might be upsetting to their congregations—like I talked to one priest who had been married three times, where if the congregation had known about that they would have been very upset. There’s nothing illegal about it; this person’s not shy about telling that, but it could have been damaging. But I had the sense that . . . if I went around and did these interviews, I didn’t want to destroy the data because I thought they had some historical importance. . . . [The IRB said,] “and when you get done with this study if you’re not going to destroy the data you have to store it in an archive for 50 years, and I checked with [university] archives and they said, “we’re not going to store anything like that.” . . . I wanted to preserve the data, but there was no way to do it. . . . I actually quit the project [because the IRB made it impossible to do]. (2-13-111411)\r\n\r\nWhile protecting research participants’ privacy can be difficult, even in carefully prepared and edited publications, the nature of ethnographic materials makes them especially difficult to confidentially preserve over time. Audio and video recordings present obvious confidentiality problems by capturing a respondents’ voice or image, ((For a discussion of the extreme difficulty of archiving video and audio data anonymously, see Louise Corti, Annette Day, and Gill Backhouse, “Confidentiality and Informed Consent: Issues for Consideration in the Preservation of and Provision of Access to Qualitative Data Archives,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000): 4.4c, <a href=\"http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1024\">http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1024</a>.)) but even interview transcripts can be problematic. A common practice in archiving ethnographic materials is to make attempts to remove potentially identifying information from archived transcripts. However, even these “anonymized” transcripts often still contain personal details that allow the possible identification of research participants. For example, in the interviews conducted for this study, participants regularly discussed their discipline and research interests. Coupled with the names of the universities where the research was conducted—which are contained in all of our research proposals and publications—this seemingly innocuous information would probably render any of our participants identifiable with a simple web search if the full interview transcripts were released. This might not seem like a significant risk for scholars describing projects that they routinely discuss publically, but depending on the other details contained in the transcript it might also be embarrassing or potentially damaging (for example, comments about university administrators, other colleagues, etc.). As is often the case with qualitative research, removing these contextual details would diminish, if not destroy, the usefulness of these data to future researchers—the ostensible audience for these materials. Unfortunately, each piece of contextual detail retained about a research participant to aid in data interpretation simultaneously creates more potential for identification.\r\n\r\nGiven technological advances, removing all conceivably identifying details might still be insufficient to guarantee that transcripts are rendered anonymous. In fact, anonymizing transcripts may soon no longer be technically possible. Arvind Narayana and his colleagues have demonstrated that it is possible to accurately identify anonymous online authors up to 20 percent of the time based on writing style alone, given a sufficient corpus of example texts. ((A. Narayanan, H. Paskov, N. Z. Gong, J. Bethencourt, E. Stefanov, E. C. R. Shin, and D. Song, “On the Feasibility of Internet-scale Author Identification,” Security and Privacy (SP), 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (May 20-23, 2012): 301, <a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6234420\">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6234420</a>.)) As more and more content moves online, one can only assume that these techniques will become more robust, so that identifying a participant from the vocabulary or speech patterns in a transcript may eventually become a matter of applying the correct software. These realities set up even the most well-intentioned researchers to fail to meet the obligations required by IRBs and the agreements made with their respondents.\r\n\r\nWhen archiving ethnographic materials, confidentiality can also be equally important for protecting the researcher. This is especially true for the archiving of fieldnotes, which are profoundly personal for many ethnographic researchers. Researchers are often quite ambivalent about these data, regularly describing feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, or embarrassment about their work and what it reveals about them as scholars. ((Jackson, “I Am a Fieldnote,” 10-12.)) When talking about her data collection process, an anthropologist in our study observed:\r\n\r\nThat’s the thing with fieldnotes, you never show them to anyone . . . as long as it works for you . . . it’s not like you have to show it to someone else and have them make sense of it, which is kind of a shame because it would be nice to have data in formats where people could, you know, sort of, archive that information. (2-16-120211)\r\n\r\nIn his study of fieldnote practices, Jean Jackson observes, “Many respondents point out that the highly personal nature of fieldnotes influences the extent of one’s willingness to share them: ‘Fieldnotes can reveal how worthless your work was, the lacunae, your linguistic incompetence, your not being made a blood brother, your childish temper.’” ((Ibid., 22.)) Anthropologist Simon Ottenberg describes his fieldnotes similarly, “[W]hen I was younger, I would have felt uncomfortable at the thought of someone else using my notes, whether I was alive or dead—they are so much a private thing, so much an aspect of personal field experience, so much a private language, so much part of my ego, my childhood [as an anthropologist], and my personal maturity.” ((Simon Ottenberg, “Thirty Years of Fieldnotes: Changing Relationships to the Text,” in <i>Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology</i>, ed. Roger Sanjek (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1990), 153.)) This attachment and ambivalence may make researchers reluctant to turn over control of their notes to an archives—especially one that has the purpose of making materials available publically on the internet. This professional practice not only makes it very difficult to substantiate or verify ethnographers’ data, suggesting a need for ethnographers to develop more proactive and sensitive data-sharing procedures, but also creates a situation where ethnographic materials are saved, but with inadequate plans for preservation. Zeitlyn notes, “Paradoxically most anthropologists want neither to destroy their field material nor archive it.” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471.)) So, too, with our study: almost no one had made plans for their data beyond the short term, let alone the final dispensation of their materials at the end of their career or after their death.\r\n\r\nWhile archivists regularly assure scholars that the papers of “ordinary” or not-famous researchers are sometimes the most valuable, ((Catherine Fowler, \"Ethical Considerations,\" in Silverman and Parezo, <i>Preserving the Anthropological Record</i>, 64-65; Robert Leopold, “The Second Life of Ethnographic Fieldnotes,” <i>Ateliers d\'anthropologie</i> 32 (2008): 4.)) researchers themselves are often unconvinced. Many of our respondents had trouble imagining the potential audience for their data and primary materials, although one Environmental Studies researcher shared data on graffiti images she collected during fieldwork following a particular ethnic conflict event. The data were not directly related to her primary research questions, but another scholar used them in a Master’s thesis (and possibly in a future dissertation). Nevertheless, doubts about future usefulness contribute to researchers’ reluctance to undertake sometimes arduous and time-consuming data preservation and annotation tasks, such as redacting confidential information, and to neglect advance planning for the eventual archiving of their materials, such as assuring adequate consent procedures. This is potentially a key area of advocacy for data curators and archivists, who are well positioned to both educate researchers in the importance of preserving primary data for future generations of researchers, even if its immediate value is not apparent, and to provide tools such as cross-indexes and finding aids that make these data more useful and comparable. ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage,” 301-305. See also Louise Corti, “Progress and Problems of Preserving and Providing Access to Qualitative Data for Social Research—The International Picture of an Emerging Culture,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000): 10.1.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Consent Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nBoth IRBs and disciplinary societies’ ethics statements emphasize the importance and necessity of obtaining informed consent from research participants. Given the possibility of archiving materials indefinitely, and especially for web publication, obtaining fully informed consent may be a futile endeavor. Libby Bishop points out that because researchers cannot adequately speculate on all the uses in which data might be employed, explicit consent is “logically impossible.” ((Bishop, “Ethical Sharing,” 263.)) However, Bishop also observes that this should not paralyze researchers from depositing their materials in archives, since consent for the primary research activity is in itself partial and no researcher can fully explain all information about any research project. ((Ibid., 264.)) Zeitlyn makes this point in another way, noting that cultural differences may also limit the ability of a researcher to obtain consent in a way that is recognizable to IRBs: “Once material is archived, it may be consulted by unknown others who might use it in novel ways. . . . Can a researcher obtain meaningful prior informed consent if the uses to which the material might be put in the future cannot be explained?” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471; see also Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 147.))\r\n\r\nWhile Bishop suggests responding to this problem by providing examples of how archived research might be reused or by obtaining open-ended consent, ((Bishop, “Ethical Sharing,” 263.)) others suggest a more comprehensive approach that understands consent as a process rather than a one-time event. ((Carusi and Jirotka, “From Data Archive,” 294; Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 146; AAA, Code of Ethics, III.A.4.)) This approach presents significant difficulties when applied to the lifecycle of an entire ethnographic research project, especially once data and other fieldwork materials are deposited in an archives for the purpose of long-term access and preservation. If appropriate consent for archiving is not obtained at the outset of a project, or is sought when new uses are discovered for materials, contacting participants to authorize this usage can be extremely difficult and costly for ethnographers, if not outright impossible. Furthermore, a consent model that requires re-contacting participants also requires confidentiality or anonymization procedures to be reversible, meaning that the researcher must retain records that can link individuals to the materials about them. Retaining contact information or other identifying records is not best practice for assuring participant confidentiality, and in the case of truly sensitive research, doing so unnecessarily maintains records that could be subject to subpoena or otherwise compromised. For example, in 2012 the US Department of Justice issued a subpoena in connection with a murder investigation on behalf of Great Britain for access to oral history interviews conducted with Irish Republican Army and Loyalist paramilitary members as part of “The Belfast Project,” archived at Boston College’s Burns Library. While the project’s confidentiality agreement promised interviewees that these materials would be embargoed until their death, this guarantee was subject to exceptions required by American law; a point that may have been unclear to the research participants. Both Boston College and the researchers are presently contesting the subpoenas, but the initial rulings by a federal district court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals have found that the subpoenas are legal. ((The Society of American Archivists Oral History Section maintains a webpage summarizing the case and providing links to relevant documents at <a href=\"http://www2.archivists.org/groups/oral-history-section/the-belfast-case-information-for-saa-members\">http://www2.archivists.org/groups/oral-history-section/the-belfast-case-information-for-saa-members</a>.)) As this case demonstrates, whenever identifying information exists, there is a possibility that its disclosure can be compelled. From the point of view of research-participant confidentiality, it is therefore preferable to destroy materials that enable identification or re-contact as soon as possible after research is complete.\r\n\r\nSince anonymization is an all-or-nothing decision that must be irreversible, even for the researcher, if it is to be effective, ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471.)) in order to make consent an ongoing process, one must also accept that the data cannot be made fully anonymous. The question then becomes how researchers can meaningfully extend consent decisions to include archives without rendering them unmanageable for their administrators or unnecessarily diminishing their analytical value. ((See Carusi and Jirotka, “From Data Archive,” 294-95.)) Balancing the need to maintain appropriate levels of confidentiality with the administrative costs is a critical area for collaboration between researchers, archivists, and data specialists. Fully anonymizing datasets is probably neither necessary, nor cost effective, for relatively low-risk materials, ((See Corti, Day, and Backhouse,\" Confidentiality and Informed Consent,\" 4.4, on the expense of creating anonymized archives.)) but both the researcher and the archivists must fully understand the potential risk scenarios before these decisions can be made, particularly in an environment where privacy protections are an increasing concern for research participants. While discussing the challenges he faces in complying with funder’s public access requirements, a sociologist observed:\r\n\r\nClearly the biggest problem is the problem of protection of privacy. The concern of privacy has been ramped up tremendously over the last 10 or 15 years, and the process of getting permission to analyze data can be difficult, but a trend in social science data is to include more and more information that\'s sensitive. . . . I think the field is trying to now establish appropriate levels of protection for particular kinds of data and is trying to balance this problem of privacy with public access. And it is a challenge and it’s going to require some new modes of doing things. (5-11-103111)\r\n\r\nDeveloping these modes of work and processes of consent requires not only the participation of researchers and scholarly societies, but also intensive cooperation with data management specialists, technologists, and archivists. ((ICPSR’s “Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving Phase 5: Preparing Data for Sharing” provides a model for these processes. See <a href=\"http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/guide/chapter5.html\">http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/guide/chapter5.html</a>.))\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusions and Recommendations</b>\r\n\r\nResearchers and archivists alike face tremendous challenges in effectively preserving ethnographic research data and providing meaningful access for researchers and other stakeholders while simultaneously protecting sensitive data. In order to be effective, data sharing, confidentiality, and consent imperatives all require the active participation and investment of researchers themselves. Decisions about access, issues of authorship attribution, adequate consent, and the level of confidentially required cannot be made without the input of someone who is deeply knowledgeable about the contexts in which the research took place. However, as we have seen, none of these decision processes necessarily end at the moment when the materials are deposited in an archives or repository, and a researcher’s ethical obligation to his or her research participants does not end once he or she has transferred responsibility for their preservation. This sense of responsibility makes many researchers reluctant to relinquish control over their ethnographic materials, lest changing political, social, or cultural conditions necessitates a more restrictive approach to data access than was initially required.\r\n\r\nFor example, an Environmental Studies researcher noted that currently her data does not present much risk to her respondents:\r\n\r\nMost of the data I’ve collected really have limited privacy issues or any kind of harm that could come to respondents. There are some topics that I’ve looked at, that depending on, when—you know, timeliness—at what point these were published, that identifying information could be problematic. In [central Asian country] it’s a lot easier—at least currently—the situation for my topics isn’t dangerous. That doesn’t mean it can’t be in the future and if I extended the research to neighboring countries then I would probably have some more serious confidentiality issues. (2-12-111011)\r\n\r\nIf the political situation for her respondents changed, however, this researcher might be ethically obligated to change the access conditions of any materials that she had archived, even if her consent procedures had addressed this eventuality. Repositories for ethnographic materials must be careful to include procedures to respond to these types of situations in their donor agreements, and researchers should discuss the unique qualities of ethnographic materials prior to their deposit. As Parezo points out, “it is unethical and unreasonable to expect the archival community to guess which fieldnotes contain sensitive information and what are reasonable use restrictions.” ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage,” 285.))\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, preparing materials for deposit into an archives is often a low priority for ethnographers for a variety of reasons, and the archiving of ethnographic data is further hindered by a persistent lack of training. While comprehensive historical review is beyond the scope of this article, Silverman already noted the problem of a lack of formal training in data collection and management practices among anthropologists almost 20 years ago, ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 6.)) before the rise of many of the complications that the expansion of digital data collection created. Almost none of the scholars we interviewed reported that data curation or stewardship training was part of their graduate curriculum, and data management was usually only addressed narrowly in relation to methodological approaches and problems. The ethical and practical difficulties involved in managing and preserving large amounts of research data were rarely addressed, with most researchers acquiring the skills they needed via trial and error. ((Jahnke, Asher, and Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>.)) None of the scholars interviewed during this study expressed satisfaction with their level of expertise in data management, and few had access to individuals who could provide knowledgeable guidance. While it would be preferable for graduate curricula to include this type of training, it seems unlikely that this change will occur in the near term. It is, therefore, likely that archivists and data specialists will need to provide this training, preferably by developing relationships with ethnographic researchers as early as possible in the research process.\r\n\r\nThe lack of confidence in their data-management training compounds researchers’ apprehension about the ethical issues contained in their data. Researchers are naturally—and rightfully—conservative about the potential risks in sharing data, especially if they are not convinced they can protect their respondents’ confidentiality, or that they have obtained appropriate consent—issues that the difficulties of cross-cultural communication make more complex. Without such assurances that these ethical imperatives can be addressed, many researchers are unlikely to invest in archiving their materials. “In many cases, their desire to avoid the ethical risks of inappropriate data release may outweigh the costs of potential data loss.” ((Ibid., 17.))\r\n\r\nBecause of these interrelated concerns, it is critical that the archival and data curation systems available to ethnographic researchers have multiple and fine-grained levels of access and privacy controls. Tools must be developed that can appropriately manage confidential data and that allow researchers, working in conjunction with their respondents, to exercise control over their data, administer who has access to it, and account for culturally specific restrictions on data use. ((Ibid., 17-18.)) One example of a system attempting to address these requirements is the Murkutu content management system (<a href=\"http://www.mukurtu.org/\">http://www.mukurtu.org/</a>), which makes cultural protocols a fundamental part of access to materials. This allows for the easy creation of fine-grained and culturally appropriate user groups with specifically defined usage rights, and it is being developed in cooperation with indigenous communities. ((A list of community groups and organizations participating in the Mukurtu project is available at <a href=\"http://www.mukurtu.org/community.html\">http://www.mukurtu.org/community.html</a>.))\r\n\r\nBecause the nature of ethnographic materials makes them potentially subject to ongoing and evolving dilemmas of confidentiality and consent, archivists and data managers should understand that these materials may require ongoing curation, preferably through processes and procedures that incorporate researchers in a collaborative and meaningful way. Although many researchers would welcome the ability to more easily share their data, particularly in collaborative projects and in response to data-sharing requirements, they are almost universally resistant to any arrangement in which they would relinquish control over access to the data. As one anthropologist described:\r\n\r\nPeople don’t hesitate, at all, to share data with collaborators that they trust. … If you provide a mechanism for collaboration, even if it’s just Google Docs or something, you know, people share data easily and freely. It’s when it becomes an anonymous process that they seem to get balky. (1-02-100511)\r\n\r\nThe goal of making materials publically available online, then, will require archival systems and processes that are cognizant of the complex social relationships embedded within ethnographic materials, not only between the researcher and his or her respondents, but also between and among the many stakeholders in ethnographic data. The development of additional policies, ethical guidelines, and best practices by disciplinary organizations, funding agencies, universities, and cultural institutions could further aid researchers and archivists in navigating the ethical dilemmas contained in the archival process.\r\n\r\nBecause much ethnographic data is collected by individuals in relatively small and often idiosyncratic datasets, it is especially vulnerable to loss due to benign neglect or lack or resources, even if the data are historically unique. A sociologist described one such vulnerable dataset:\r\n\r\nWe did life histories of 45 people in a [church] congregation in [central Pennsylvania town]. . . . It’s probably the only body of material on a single congregation of that depth and complexity that exists, and I’m just too lazy to have figured out what to do with it and write it up and everything, but you could imagine somewhere somebody who wants to do research on congregations would find this incredibly valuable. But what’s going to happen to it [in the long term]? And what’s going to happen to it is, the copies I have will end up in a trash can, and my computer hard drive will eventually crash or get outmoded or get erased, and that’ll be the end of it [if there isn’t a place to archive it]. (2-13-111411)\r\n\r\nIn order to prevent these losses, data management specialists and archivists must specifically curate these materials. They must also build relationships with ethnographers to resolve the unique ethical dilemmas these data present and the uneasy tensions between researchers’ desire to share data publically and obligations to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the individuals and communities they study.\r\n\r\nFinally, despite the acknowledged importance and value of archival materials to the disciplines and future researchers, academic rewards systems offer very little payoff for the work that goes into making ethnographic materials available, and ethnographic researchers are often under-resourced in the funding, time, and personnel support needed for preparing materials for archiving. ((The NSF’s recent decision to list datasets as one of the research products to be included in the section of its grant proposals where researchers describe their qualifications does suggest, however, that the current rewards system may gradually be changing (see <a href=\"http://nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp\">http://nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp</a>).)) Archivists must therefore work to make archival systems and the development of archival processes and policies as straightforward for researchers as possible, ideally assisting in integrating the development of metadata and other secondary materials (for example, codebooks, explanatory materials, finding aids, and ontologies) necessary to archiving and ensuring the long-term usefulness of primary data as early in the research process as possible. Likewise, funding agencies should improve funding for long-term data management, preservation, and curatorial services, either directly or via guidelines to institutions for recouping indirect costs, especially when the grant mandates archiving or public data accessibility. By providing these supports, archivists and funders would greatly assist researchers in responding to the imperatives of providing access to data and assuring the confidentiality and consent of their respondents, as well as resolving the ethical dilemmas contained in their data, thereby helping assure the preservation of irreplaceable ethnographic information.','Curating the Ethnographic Moment','','inherit','open','open','','4698-revision-15','','','2013-06-17 23:52:26','2013-06-17 23:52:26','',4698,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4698-revision-15/',0,'revision','',0),(4717,3,'2013-06-17 23:46:13','2013-06-17 23:46:13','<b>Introduction</b>\r\n\r\nBy vastly increasing the volume and types of data that field researchers can collect, digital technologies have reshaped ethnographers’ relationship with their accumulated research data and materials. Whereas paper-based fieldnotes and other physical ethnographic records are often deposited in repositories and made accessible only after a scholar’s death, the emergence of born-digital materials has created and enhanced possibilities for rapidly sharing data, not only with other researchers but also with research subjects and the public at large via online repositories. While many researchers support the principal of public access to research data, making this data available online can compound the ethical dilemmas ethnographers face. Ethnographers often find themselves torn between contradictory imperatives to share data publically and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the individuals and communities they study. ((L. Jahnke, A. Asher, and S.D.C. Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>, CLIR Publication #154 (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2012).))\r\n\r\nUnlike experimental data, ethnographic data, by definition, are not reproducible. ((See Sydel Silverman, “Introduction,” in <i>Preserving the Anthropological Record</i>, ed. Sydel Silverman and Nancy J. Parezo (New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1995), 1.)) Ethnographic fieldwork is inextricably linked to a particular time, place, and society, making the primary data of ethnographers unique and unrecoverable. For this reason, today’s ethnographic fieldnotes are particularly important to preserve as tomorrow’s historical records; they document observations of places and cultures that—because they are in a constant state of change—will never exist in the same configuration again. Since ethnographic fieldnotes provide the empirical basis for researchers’ public authority, it would likewise seem logical for fieldnotes and other ethnographic materials to be made available for verification purposes in online repositories as soon as possible after the publication of research reports, articles, or monographs.\r\n\r\nHowever, several characteristics of ethnographic materials cause them to be particularly difficult to make publically accessible. First, many ethnographic researchers are reluctant to share their data for personal reasons. Ethnographic fieldnotes are intensely personal documents for many researchers, who often view them as extremely valuable for their own work, but doubt that they would be useful to other researchers without the accompanying contexts and experiences in which the materials were collected. Secondly, ethnographic materials also routinely contain private, confidential, or culturally sensitive information about both research subjects and the researcher, which often requires time-consuming or costly procedures to redact, and may limit or prevent public dissemination and secondary analyses of the data. Finally, ethnographic materials are regularly collected in contexts with varying or conflicting cultural standards for consent and data use, raising ethical questions about the efficacy of archiving these materials. For these reasons, balancing the multiple imperatives of data sharing, informed consent, and confidentiality for research participants is a fundamental issue for ethnographers preparing to deposit their materials in an archives, and the ethics surrounding these decisions was one of the most common and recurring themes in the interviews conducted for the study we present here.\r\n\r\nUsing data gathered during the 2011-2012 academic year in a qualitative study of researchers’ data management and curation practices, ((This study was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and managed by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). See Jahnke, Asher, and Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>.)) this article examines the practical and ethical dilemmas ethnographers face as they work with diverse research materials across varying, and sometimes conflicting, cultural standards for consent and data use. By emphasizing the everyday practices of researchers, this study sought to gain a holistic understanding of the workflows involved in the creation, management, and preservation of research data in order to better comprehend researchers’ unmet needs within data curation processes. Twenty-three researchers from varying ranks working in a variety of social science disciplines at five universities ((Penn State University, Lehigh University, Bucknell University, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Pennsylvania.)) participated in interviews for this study (see Table 1), which focused on how researchers collect and analyze data, how they manage and preserve these data, and what training they have had in data-curation practices.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4704\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"273\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/asher-jahnke_remixed_3_TABLE.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-4704\" alt=\"Table 1. Rank and academic discipline of the study participants.  *The nine starred participants conducted significant amounts of ethnographic research.\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/asher-jahnke_remixed_3_TABLE-273x300.jpg\" width=\"273\" height=\"300\" /></a> Table 1. Rank and academic discipline of the study participants. *The nine starred participants conducted significant amounts of ethnographic research.[/caption]\r\n\r\nAlthough scholars across many disciplines were grappling with the ethical and philosophical problems of data sharing—often in the absence of coherent policies for data archiving and release from funding agencies, professional organizations, or their employing institutions—this article will focus on the experiences of nine of these researchers who conducted ethnography as part of their data collection. Because ethnographic research involves a complex social interplay between researchers and respondents, often from differing cultural contexts, the management of these data presents unique difficulties for researchers who usually have little or no training in preservation, curation, or data-stewardship strategies. This article will examine how researchers navigate these difficulties when dealing with the two principal types of ethnographic data: fieldnotes—the diverse array of notes, writings, and other materials upon which researchers base their ethnographies ((Jean E. Jackson, “I Am a Fieldnote,” in <i>Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology</i>, ed. Roger Sanjek (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 1.))—and the research artifacts, such as transcripts and audio or video recordings, produced from more formal, direct interactions with respondents.\r\n\r\n<b>The Data Sharing Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nFunding agencies—especially agencies administering public funds—are increasingly requiring qualitative research data to be made publically available. Since 1995, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)—a major source of funding for qualitative research in the United Kingdom—has required its awardees to archive their data as a condition of funding. ((See O. Parry and N. S. Mauthner, “Whose Data Are They Anyway?” <i>Sociology</i> 38, no. 1 (2004): 140-41.)) Similarly, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other US funding agencies (e.g. National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities) have begun to require formal data-management plans detailing how researchers will meet data-sharing expectations. Our assumption is that this trend will continue as both public and private funders seek maximum returns on their investment in research. While not always explicitly required, the goal of many of these policies is for research data to be deposited in an appropriate repository with online access for both other researchers and the public. For ethnographers, who are often accustomed to retaining exclusive rights over their fieldnotes and other materials, this can represent an uncomfortable shift in research practice, even when these repositories take into account the particular confidentiality and consent demands inherent to ethnographic research (discussed further below) and implement appropriate safeguards such as embargoing or redacting sensitive materials.\r\n\r\nIn principal, the ethnographic researchers we interviewed for this study saw data preservation and sharing as positive values, even if they were not sure about how to preserve and share data or who would potentially use the materials. When asked about what parts of her research data she would like to preserve, one anthropologist explained:\r\n\r\nThat’s the thing—If you keep anything long enough it becomes interesting. . . . For myself . . . I would love to archive everything and maybe put some kind of time stamp on personal information where it can’t be released for some amount of time. It’s so hard to know what people in the future would be interested in. . . . I try to keep data in such a way that hopefully it would be comprehensible to someone else if they were willing to work through my crazy software. . . . If I had somebody’s fieldnotes from 100 years ago from my field site, I’d be totally fascinated by that, so you never know what people are going to be interested in. (2-16-120211) ((The number in parentheses is the participant identification number; please refer to Table 1.))\r\n\r\nThe scholarly societies to which many of these researchers belong also broadly support data sharing and potential reuse. The most recent 2012 revision on the American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) ethics statement explicitly states that it is the obligation of the researcher to preserve records and make results accessible, “Anthropologists have an ethical responsibility for ensuring the integrity, preservation, and protection of their work” and, the “results of anthropological research should be disseminated in a timely fashion” provided it is not “at the expense of protecting confidentiality.” ((American Anthropological Association (AAA), <i>Statement on Ethics: Principals of Professional Responsibility</i>, 2012, <a href=\"http://www.aaanet.org/profdev/ethics/upload/Statement-on-Ethics-Principles-of-Professional-Responsibility.pdf\">http://www.aaanet.org/profdev/ethics/upload/Statement-on-Ethics-Principles-of-Professional-Responsibility.pdf</a>.)) The previous 1998 version also addressed data access and preservation, but not as systematically or forcefully. ((This version was slightly revised in 2009 to make minor changes to some of the statement’s language. Since this revision did not alter the structure or main points of the statement, we continue to refer the 1998 version (as does the AAA’s ethics website). American Anthropological Association, Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association, Statement, 1998, B.4-5, C1.)) Likewise, the American Sociological Association sets similar expectations in the data sharing section of its Code of Ethics. ((American Sociological Association, Code of Ethics, 1999, 13.05.))\r\n\r\nThe benefits of data archiving and sharing for scholarly disciplines and the advancement of knowledge are straightforward: preserved materials can be subjected to secondary analysis, unnecessary duplication of research can be minimized, historical records can be maintained, and, importantly, scholars can independently evaluate the validity of published results by consulting the primary data. ((Libby Bishop, “Ethical Sharing and Reuse of Qualitative Data,” <i>Australian Journal of Social Issues</i> 44, no. 3 (2009): 266.)) Furthermore, online repositories might enable new forms of scholarship and writing. For the first time, materials preserved and made accessible online have made it feasible to make publically available the corpus of primary texts that form the basis of support for ethnographic argumentation. While a non-digitized, paper-based collection could also serve this purpose, it is unlikely that more than a handful of interested readers of a particular ethnography would physically travel to the repository to examine the documents. Repositories that make resources available online fundamentally change this dynamic. In <i>Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive, </i>Johannes Fabian explores these possibilities by conducting what he describes as an experiment with “writing ethnography ‘in the presence of texts’” located in a publically accessible online repository. ((Johannes Fabian, <i>Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive</i> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), vii.)) Fabian terms this genre of writing “commentary,” a text-centered form of ethnography that assumes his reader can simultaneously consult a primary text for her or himself via an online archive. ((Ibid., 9-13.))\r\n\r\nThe text Fabian utilizes is a conversation he and Kahenga Mukonkwa Michel had about a ceremony Kahenga conducted at Fabian’s home in Zaire in 1974. ((Ibid., 3.)) The transcription, translation, and an audio excerpt of the discussion are now housed in the Archives of Popular Swahili on the website of the Language and Popular Culture in Africa project. ((Johannes. Fabian, “‘Magic and Modernity’: A Conversation with a Herbalist and Practitioner of Magic,” trans. Johannes Fabian, <i>Archives of Popular Swahili</i> 7 (2005), <a href=\"http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol7/kahengatext.html#introduction\">http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol7/kahengatext.html#introduction</a>.)) Fabian argues that the repository of documents serves an important epistemological purpose by “mediat[ing] between . . . events, the presentation of evidence, and our aims and claims to produce anthropological knowledge.” ((Fabian, “Magic,” 123.)) By allowing the reader of an ethnography to interrogate and evaluate the primary data on which it is based, the archive reveals how ethnographies are composed through the confrontation between the researcher, his or her respondents, and the texts they co-create. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography</i>, 54. One does wonder, however, why Fabian considered a traditionally published monograph necessary to this project, rather than simply including it in the archive. Given that his book annotates the online texts using paragraph numbers that assume a specific online layout, it would seem more effective to have created hyperlinks between the commentary and the primary materials. In this way, the “experiment” seems incomplete.))\r\n\r\nFabian’s instructive experiment notwithstanding, for many researchers the practice of making ethnographic materials available online is fraught. Ethnography requires researchers to occupy a methodological position that mediates and translates between multiple cultural contexts. This positioning leads to a number of difficulties for ethnographers as they attempt to meet their obligations to multiple constituencies—including funders, cultural institutions, and the researcher’s employing university, in addition to the individuals and communities the researcher works with—while negotiating the processes of placing materials in archives and repositories. When working with human subjects, ethical pitfalls abound, and often ethnographers must resolve contradictions between these groups.\r\n\r\nAt a very basic level, policies requiring access to research data may “directly [contradict] some ethnic groups’ cultural traditions concerning secrecy and controlled access to information.” ((David Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives: Possible Futures and Contingent Pasts. Archives as Anthropological Surrogates,” <i>Annual Review of Anthropology</i> 41, no. 1 (2012): 472, doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145721. See also G. Isaac, “Whose Idea Was This?: Museums, Replicas, and the Reproduction of Knowledge,” <i>Current Anthropology</i> 52, no. 2 (2011) 211-233.)) For example, an anthropologist might gain access to knowledge that is secret, or restricted for cultural or social reasons. During his fieldwork with the Saramaka, a group in Suriname who descended from escaped African slaves, Richard Price gained knowledge about the “Old-Time People” who experienced the war for liberation from roughly 1680 to 1762. ((Richard Price, <i>First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People</i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 5-6. For additional examples and a discussion of cross-cultural differences in relation to access to knowledge see Nancy J. Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage: CoPAR, Anthropological Records, and the Archival Community,” <i>The American Archivist </i>62 (1999): 285, note 24.)) The Saramaka consider knowledge about this time and these people powerful, dangerous, and restricted. Price struggled with the ethical implications of publishing a book within a different cultural system that uses this knowledge as its primary subject. ((Price, <i>First Time, </i>21-23.)) Price notes that by putting the information in a public document, he potentially “deprives [the] author of control (except perhaps via the language in which [the book] appears) over [his or her] audience.” ((Ibid., 23.)) This problem is compounded exponentially once information is made available online (as Price’s book now is, at least in part, in Google Books) by removing even the physical restrictions of a bound monograph.\r\n\r\nInformation need not be “exotic” to create publishing difficulties for ethnographers. For example, an ethnographer working in a corporate, government, or other institutional setting in the United States might be privy to proprietary or confidential information about a product or service that must be ethically and legally protected. A researcher in environmental engineering explained her process when conducting interviews:\r\n\r\nAnother big concern is confidentiality because I record those conversations, and then there’s kind of an extended period of time in which I allow those who I’ve talked with to redact parts of our conversation if they’ve talked about things they would prefer to remain private. . . I’m talking to several companies about the development and production of their technologies and so there’s some proprietary information that comes up and that’s really the main concern. (5-20-020212)\r\n\r\nIndeed, accidental release of this type of information might put the researcher at as much legal risk as her respondents.\r\n\r\nWhen preparing to preserve ethnographic data, issues of ownership and authorship are also not always straightforward, and it is imperative that researchers communicate and address these potential problems with archivists, data curators, and repository and digital collection managers before depositing ethnographic materials. For example, consent forms for interviews might not clearly state who holds the copyright or who has a license to use the recording or transcripts, potentially leading to confusion over the legal status of these materials and making it more difficult for a researcher to transfer materials to an archives. Intellectual property and copyright are themselves culturally specific concepts, and a legal right to dispose of or deposit materials as a researcher sees fit does not equal an ethical right to do so. The people providing information, the funders, the institution that employs the researcher, and the community in which the researcher works all have a moral interest in the disposition of the data. ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 4; Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 142.)) Parry and Mauthner go so far as to say, “[B]ecause the construction of qualitative data is a joint endeavor between respondent and researcher, both parties should retain authorship/ownership rights over the data,” which creates “practical, legal and ethical implications for archiving and re-use.” ((Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 141.))\r\n\r\nSome researchers, including Fabian, argue that since ethnographers and their respondents are joint agents in creating ethnographic materials, both parties should be named to acknowledge their contributions. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography, </i>16-17.)) However, naming respondents as authors or contributors contradicts an ethnographer’s imperative to protect the confidentiality of their research participants, which is a basic standard required by most Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved research and by professional-ethics statements. While David Zeitlyn observes that “a default assumption that notes will be anonymized conflicts with an individual’s moral right to be recognized as the author of his or her words,” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 470.)) many, if not most, ethnographers would likely be uncomfortable naming their participants in almost any context, but especially in publically accessible online repositories. This is likely to hold true even if a researcher philosophically accepts that his or her authority to determine the level of sensitivity that the data require privileges the researcher’s position vis-à-vis his or her respondents. ((Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 148.))\r\n\r\nMany ethnographers thus understand themselves not so much as owners of their data, but rather as stewards or custodians of data that are produced by a complex set of relationships between researchers and respondents. ((Silverman, “Introduction,” 4-5.)) As the stewards of these data, researchers are often the de facto interpreters of the terms by which data are made available, choosing what and when to publish or deposit materials in repositories or archives. Despite his assertion that correspondents should be named, Fabian notes that he exercises this stewardship by attempting not to publish anything that might be dangerous or damaging to the people with whom he worked—a position that is probably made easier by the fact that the texts he is working with were already 30 years old when he transcribed and posted them on the web. ((Fabian, <i>Ethnography, </i>16-17.)) Many researchers we interviewed adopted a similar “attitude of moral responsibility towards research participants, expressed in the way in which data are handled,” ((Annamaria Carusi and Marina Jirotka, “From Data Archive to Ethical Labyrinth,” <i>Qualitative Research</i> 9, no. 3 (2009): 292.)) citing ethical concerns about appropriate use of the data as well as issues of confidentiality and consent. Even for researchers who support public access to data, these concerns cause them to question funders’ data-sharing requirements. A researcher in education who was preparing to apply for additional funding to create a longitudinal dataset by re-interviewing her previous respondents noted her uncertainty:\r\n\r\nI know that a lot of places when you apply for funding they want eventually for [data] to become public. I haven’t had to deal with it, but I’ve definitely thought about it. . . . I want to make sure to preserve the qualitative data because it’s very important to me . . . so it’s a concern for me personally to save it. . . . [But] once it’s public, or shared between other people, I would like to get help eventually on making the data itself more confidential because they are just interview transcripts which, you know, there are a lot of [confidentiality] issues with that, and that I would have to [make the data itself more confidential] before I shared it. . . . I don’t know if there are limits to the extent to which I can make it public or not. (1-04-100511)\r\n\r\nIn the context of making their data accessible, these confidentiality and consent negotiations are some of the most difficult issues for scholars to resolve before depositing their ethnographic materials in data repositories or archives. These issues are also most effectively addressed as early in a research project as possible, so that researchers can implement the necessary practices and protocols to insure that confidentiality and consent can be assured in the long term prior to data collection. As Charles Humphrey and his colleagues discuss, the integral involvement of archivists and data-curation specialists in the planning stages and throughout qualitative research projects greatly increases the quality of the data products and decreases ethical problems associated with deposition in repositories and archives. ((Charles K. Humphrey, Carole A. Estabrooks, Judy R. Norris, Jane E. Smith, and Kathryn L. Hesketh, “Archivist on Board: Contributions to the Research Team,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000).)) As they point out, this collaboration is beneficial to both researchers and archivists, since good archival preparation practices are often synonymous with good research practices. ((Humphrey et al., “Archivist on Board,” 5.))\r\n\r\nDespite efforts by organizations such as the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR) to foster this type of collaboration ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage.”)) and educate ethnographers in data curation and archival preparation practices, ((CoPAR has released a series of fourteen bulletins outlining specific issues involved in the preservation of anthropological materials and addressed to practicing anthropologists. These bulletins are available at <a href=\"http://copar.org/bulletins.htm\">http://copar.org/bulletins.htm</a>. Unfortunately, since most of these bulletins were written in the late 1990s, many of the technology discussions are out of date. However, the conceptual discussions remain highly relevant.)) it appears that relatively few ethnographers seek out the assistance of archivists or data management specialists until after data collection is completed, unless funding requirements compelled them to do so. Of the ethnographers we interviewed, only two had consulted with data management services prior to the data collection phase of their research, both as a result of the NSF’s requirement that data-management plans be included in new funding proposals. Only one project had a systematic plan for depositing its ethnographic data in an archives, principally because this research was conducted as part of a very large and well-funded research initiative. This project had amassed some 40,000 pages of ethnographic fieldnotes, which were being preserved but not yet been shared publically. The researcher leading this project explained:\r\n\r\nIt’s news to anthropologists that data should be made public. It’s not something that’s in their mindset. In fact they are appalled by it. . . . However, that [ethnographic] data was paid for using a million dollars of federal money and I’m using it with some of my grad students who are essentially doing secondary analysis of fieldnotes. I think that in the long run that data should be made public, and could be, but very carefully. . . . I don’t think that’s a problem . . . my guess is we’re going to get there. . . . A very new area now is “what do you do with electronic fieldnotes?” and “can those be made available for researchers?” If nothing else, I think this archive of fieldnotes . . .in 20 or 30 years could be a great historical source and should be preserved on that basis. So, I would like to see us work out ways of carefully having anthropological and ethnographic data made public too. (5-11-103011)\r\n\r\nIn working out the procedures for sharing these materials, this researcher went on to emphasize the paramount importance of protecting research participants’ confidentiality. Indeed, all of the ethnographers cited confidentiality concerns as one of the foremost issues that they would need to discuss and resolve with an archivist or repository manager before depositing their materials, making it perhaps the most critical area for developing collaborative practices between researchers, data curators, and archivists.\r\n\r\n<b>The Confidentiality Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nThe ethics statements of both the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association require researchers to protect the confidentiality of their respondents (although the AAA statement asserts that expectations of credit should also be addressed). ((ASA, Code of Ethics, 11; AAA, Statement on Ethics (Part 3), 7.)) Protecting research participants’ confidentiality is routinely an explicit promise within social science research, and is an almost universally assumed requirement of IRBs when reviewing research proposals. Setting aside the research participant’s potential moral right to authorship as discussed above, the nature of ethnographic research often renders the promise of confidentiality problematic, if not outright impossible. As Zachary Schrag observes, maintaining the confidentiality of fieldwork sites and research participants discussed in publications has been a perennial problem for social science researchers, as details necessary to make ethnographic and other fieldwork-based writing meaningful often simultaneously make these places and people identifiable, especially to people familiar with the location or topic. ((Zachary M. Schrag, <i>Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009</i> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 15.)) Increasing confidentiality protections almost always come at the cost of decreasing the amount of contextual information included for the ethnography’s audience, and can effectively prevent data from being deposited in an archives or repository (or sometimes even collected). A sociologist recounted the difficulties he encountered on one project:\r\n\r\nI wanted to do life histories with priests [in central Pennsylvania], and part of the problem was . . . we got into a situation where people might tell me things about their personal lives that are sort of not confidential in the IRB sense but that might be upsetting to their congregations—like I talked to one priest who had been married three times, where if the congregation had known about that they would have been very upset. There’s nothing illegal about it; this person’s not shy about telling that, but it could have been damaging. But I had the sense that . . . if I went around and did these interviews, I didn’t want to destroy the data because I thought they had some historical importance. . . . [The IRB said,] “and when you get done with this study if you’re not going to destroy the data you have to store it in an archive for 50 years, and I checked with [university] archives and they said, “we’re not going to store anything like that.” . . . I wanted to preserve the data, but there was no way to do it. . . . I actually quit the project [because the IRB made it impossible to do]. (2-13-111411)\r\n\r\nWhile protecting research participants’ privacy can be difficult, even in carefully prepared and edited publications, the nature of ethnographic materials makes them especially difficult to confidentially preserve over time. Audio and video recordings present obvious confidentiality problems by capturing a respondents’ voice or image, ((For a discussion of the extreme difficulty of archiving video and audio data anonymously, see Louise Corti, Annette Day, and Gill Backhouse, “Confidentiality and Informed Consent: Issues for Consideration in the Preservation of and Provision of Access to Qualitative Data Archives,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000): 4.4c, <a href=\"http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1024\">http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1024</a>.)) but even interview transcripts can be problematic. A common practice in archiving ethnographic materials is to make attempts to remove potentially identifying information from archived transcripts. However, even these “anonymized” transcripts often still contain personal details that allow the possible identification of research participants. For example, in the interviews conducted for this study, participants regularly discussed their discipline and research interests. Coupled with the names of the universities where the research was conducted—which are contained in all of our research proposals and publications—this seemingly innocuous information would probably render any of our participants identifiable with a simple web search if the full interview transcripts were released. This might not seem like a significant risk for scholars describing projects that they routinely discuss publically, but depending on the other details contained in the transcript it might also be embarrassing or potentially damaging (for example, comments about university administrators, other colleagues, etc.). As is often the case with qualitative research, removing these contextual details would diminish, if not destroy, the usefulness of these data to future researchers—the ostensible audience for these materials. Unfortunately, each piece of contextual detail retained about a research participant to aid in data interpretation simultaneously creates more potential for identification.\r\n\r\nGiven technological advances, removing all conceivably identifying details might still be insufficient to guarantee that transcripts are rendered anonymous. In fact, anonymizing transcripts may soon no longer be technically possible. Arvind Narayana and his colleagues have demonstrated that it is possible to accurately identify anonymous online authors up to 20 percent of the time based on writing style alone, given a sufficient corpus of example texts. ((A. Narayanan, H. Paskov, N. Z. Gong, J. Bethencourt, E. Stefanov, E. C. R. Shin, and D. Song, “On the Feasibility of Internet-scale Author Identification,” Security and Privacy (SP), 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (May 20-23, 2012): 301, <a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6234420\">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6234420</a>.)) As more and more content moves online, one can only assume that these techniques will become more robust, so that identifying a participant from the vocabulary or speech patterns in a transcript may eventually become a matter of applying the correct software. These realities set up even the most well-intentioned researchers to fail to meet the obligations required by IRBs and the agreements made with their respondents.\r\n\r\nWhen archiving ethnographic materials, confidentiality can also be equally important for protecting the researcher. This is especially true for the archiving of fieldnotes, which are profoundly personal for many ethnographic researchers. Researchers are often quite ambivalent about these data, regularly describing feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, or embarrassment about their work and what it reveals about them as scholars. ((Jackson, “I Am a Fieldnote,” 10-12.)) When talking about her data collection process, an anthropologist in our study observed:\r\n\r\nThat’s the thing with fieldnotes, you never show them to anyone . . . as long as it works for you . . . it’s not like you have to show it to someone else and have them make sense of it, which is kind of a shame because it would be nice to have data in formats where people could, you know, sort of, archive that information. (2-16-120211)\r\n\r\nIn his study of fieldnote practices, Jean Jackson observes, “Many respondents point out that the highly personal nature of fieldnotes influences the extent of one’s willingness to share them: ‘Fieldnotes can reveal how worthless your work was, the lacunae, your linguistic incompetence, your not being made a blood brother, your childish temper.’” ((Ibid., 22.)) Anthropologist Simon Ottenberg describes his fieldnotes similarly, “[W]hen I was younger, I would have felt uncomfortable at the thought of someone else using my notes, whether I was alive or dead—they are so much a private thing, so much an aspect of personal field experience, so much a private language, so much part of my ego, my childhood [as an anthropologist], and my personal maturity.” ((Simon Ottenberg, “Thirty Years of Fieldnotes: Changing Relationships to the Text,” in <i>Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology</i>, ed. Roger Sanjek (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1990), 153.)) This attachment and ambivalence may make researchers reluctant to turn over control of their notes to an archives—especially one that has the purpose of making materials available publically on the internet. This professional practice not only makes it very difficult to substantiate or verify ethnographers’ data, suggesting a need for ethnographers to develop more proactive and sensitive data-sharing procedures, but also creates a situation where ethnographic materials are saved, but with inadequate plans for preservation. Zeitlyn notes, “Paradoxically most anthropologists want neither to destroy their field material nor archive it.” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471.)) So, too, with our study: almost no one had made plans for their data beyond the short term, let alone the final dispensation of their materials at the end of their career or after their death.\r\n\r\nWhile archivists regularly assure scholars that the papers of “ordinary” or not-famous researchers are sometimes the most valuable, ((Catherine Fowler, \"Ethical Considerations,\" in Silverman and Parezo, <i>Preserving the Anthropological Record</i>, 64-65; Robert Leopold, “The Second Life of Ethnographic Fieldnotes,” <i>Ateliers d\'anthropologie</i> 32 (2008): 4.)) researchers themselves are often unconvinced. Many of our respondents had trouble imagining the potential audience for their data and primary materials, although one Environmental Studies researcher shared data on graffiti images she collected during fieldwork following a particular ethnic conflict event. The data were not directly related to her primary research questions, but another scholar used them in a Master’s thesis (and possibly in a future dissertation). Nevertheless, doubts about future usefulness contribute to researchers’ reluctance to undertake sometimes arduous and time-consuming data preservation and annotation tasks, such as redacting confidential information, and to neglect advance planning for the eventual archiving of their materials, such as assuring adequate consent procedures. This is potentially a key area of advocacy for data curators and archivists, who are well positioned to both educate researchers in the importance of preserving primary data for future generations of researchers, even if its immediate value is not apparent, and to provide tools such as cross-indexes and finding aids that make these data more useful and comparable. ((Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage,” 301-305. See also Louise Corti, “Progress and Problems of Preserving and Providing Access to Qualitative Data for Social Research—The International Picture of an Emerging Culture,” <i>Forum: Qualitative Social Research</i> 1, no. 3 (2000): 10.1.))\r\n\r\n<b>The Consent Imperative</b>\r\n\r\nBoth IRBs and disciplinary societies’ ethics statements emphasize the importance and necessity of obtaining informed consent from research participants. Given the possibility of archiving materials indefinitely, and especially for web publication, obtaining fully informed consent may be a futile endeavor. Libby Bishop points out that because researchers cannot adequately speculate on all the uses in which data might be employed, explicit consent is “logically impossible.” ((Bishop, “Ethical Sharing,” 263.)) However, Bishop also observes that this should not paralyze researchers from depositing their materials in archives, since consent for the primary research activity is in itself partial and no researcher can fully explain all information about any research project. ((Ibid., 264.)) Zeitlyn makes this point in another way, noting that cultural differences may also limit the ability of a researcher to obtain consent in a way that is recognizable to IRBs: “Once material is archived, it may be consulted by unknown others who might use it in novel ways. . . . Can a researcher obtain meaningful prior informed consent if the uses to which the material might be put in the future cannot be explained?” ((Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471; see also Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 147.))\r\n\r\nWhile Bishop suggests responding to this problem by providing examples of how archived research might be reused or by obtaining open-ended consent, ((Bishop, “Ethical Sharing,” 263.)) others suggest a more comprehensive approach that understands consent as a process rather than a one-time event.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn48\">[xlviii]</a> This approach presents significant difficulties when applied to the lifecycle of an entire ethnographic research project, especially once data and other fieldwork materials are deposited in an archives for the purpose of long-term access and preservation. If appropriate consent for archiving is not obtained at the outset of a project, or is sought when new uses are discovered for materials, contacting participants to authorize this usage can be extremely difficult and costly for ethnographers, if not outright impossible. Furthermore, a consent model that requires re-contacting participants also requires confidentiality or anonymization procedures to be reversible, meaning that the researcher must retain records that can link individuals to the materials about them. Retaining contact information or other identifying records is not best practice for assuring participant confidentiality, and in the case of truly sensitive research, doing so unnecessarily maintains records that could be subject to subpoena or otherwise compromised. For example, in 2012 the US Department of Justice issued a subpoena in connection with a murder investigation on behalf of Great Britain for access to oral history interviews conducted with Irish Republican Army and Loyalist paramilitary members as part of “The Belfast Project,” archived at Boston College’s Burns Library. While the project’s confidentiality agreement promised interviewees that these materials would be embargoed until their death, this guarantee was subject to exceptions required by American law; a point that may have been unclear to the research participants. Both Boston College and the researchers are presently contesting the subpoenas, but the initial rulings by a federal district court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals have found that the subpoenas are legal.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn49\">[xlix]</a> As this case demonstrates, whenever identifying information exists, there is a possibility that its disclosure can be compelled. From the point of view of research-participant confidentiality, it is therefore preferable to destroy materials that enable identification or re-contact as soon as possible after research is complete.\r\n\r\nSince anonymization is an all-or-nothing decision that must be irreversible, even for the researcher, if it is to be effective,<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn50\">[l]</a> in order to make consent an ongoing process, one must also accept that the data cannot be made fully anonymous. The question then becomes how researchers can meaningfully extend consent decisions to include archives without rendering them unmanageable for their administrators or unnecessarily diminishing their analytical value.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn51\">[li]</a> Balancing the need to maintain appropriate levels of confidentiality with the administrative costs is a critical area for collaboration between researchers, archivists, and data specialists. Fully anonymizing datasets is probably neither necessary, nor cost effective, for relatively low-risk materials,<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn52\">[lii]</a> but both the researcher and the archivists must fully understand the potential risk scenarios before these decisions can be made, particularly in an environment where privacy protections are an increasing concern for research participants. While discussing the challenges he faces in complying with funder’s public access requirements, a sociologist observed:\r\n\r\nClearly the biggest problem is the problem of protection of privacy. The concern of privacy has been ramped up tremendously over the last 10 or 15 years, and the process of getting permission to analyze data can be difficult, but a trend in social science data is to include more and more information that\'s sensitive. . . . I think the field is trying to now establish appropriate levels of protection for particular kinds of data and is trying to balance this problem of privacy with public access. And it is a challenge and it’s going to require some new modes of doing things. (5-11-103111)\r\n\r\nDeveloping these modes of work and processes of consent requires not only the participation of researchers and scholarly societies, but also intensive cooperation with data management specialists, technologists, and archivists.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn53\">[liii]</a>\r\n\r\n<b>Conclusions and Recommendations</b>\r\n\r\nResearchers and archivists alike face tremendous challenges in effectively preserving ethnographic research data and providing meaningful access for researchers and other stakeholders while simultaneously protecting sensitive data. In order to be effective, data sharing, confidentiality, and consent imperatives all require the active participation and investment of researchers themselves. Decisions about access, issues of authorship attribution, adequate consent, and the level of confidentially required cannot be made without the input of someone who is deeply knowledgeable about the contexts in which the research took place. However, as we have seen, none of these decision processes necessarily end at the moment when the materials are deposited in an archives or repository, and a researcher’s ethical obligation to his or her research participants does not end once he or she has transferred responsibility for their preservation. This sense of responsibility makes many researchers reluctant to relinquish control over their ethnographic materials, lest changing political, social, or cultural conditions necessitates a more restrictive approach to data access than was initially required.\r\n\r\nFor example, an Environmental Studies researcher noted that currently her data does not present much risk to her respondents:\r\n\r\nMost of the data I’ve collected really have limited privacy issues or any kind of harm that could come to respondents. There are some topics that I’ve looked at, that depending on, when—you know, timeliness—at what point these were published, that identifying information could be problematic. In [central Asian country] it’s a lot easier—at least currently—the situation for my topics isn’t dangerous. That doesn’t mean it can’t be in the future and if I extended the research to neighboring countries then I would probably have some more serious confidentiality issues. (2-12-111011)\r\n\r\nIf the political situation for her respondents changed, however, this researcher might be ethically obligated to change the access conditions of any materials that she had archived, even if her consent procedures had addressed this eventuality. Repositories for ethnographic materials must be careful to include procedures to respond to these types of situations in their donor agreements, and researchers should discuss the unique qualities of ethnographic materials prior to their deposit. As Parezo points out, “it is unethical and unreasonable to expect the archival community to guess which fieldnotes contain sensitive information and what are reasonable use restrictions.”<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn54\">[liv]</a>\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, preparing materials for deposit into an archives is often a low priority for ethnographers for a variety of reasons, and the archiving of ethnographic data is further hindered by a persistent lack of training. While comprehensive historical review is beyond the scope of this article, Silverman already noted the problem of a lack of formal training in data collection and management practices among anthropologists almost 20 years ago,<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn55\">[lv]</a> before the rise of many of the complications that the expansion of digital data collection created. Almost none of the scholars we interviewed reported that data curation or stewardship training was part of their graduate curriculum, and data management was usually only addressed narrowly in relation to methodological approaches and problems. The ethical and practical difficulties involved in managing and preserving large amounts of research data were rarely addressed, with most researchers acquiring the skills they needed via trial and error.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn56\">[lvi]</a> None of the scholars interviewed during this study expressed satisfaction with their level of expertise in data management, and few had access to individuals who could provide knowledgeable guidance. While it would be preferable for graduate curricula to include this type of training, it seems unlikely that this change will occur in the near term. It is, therefore, likely that archivists and data specialists will need to provide this training, preferably by developing relationships with ethnographic researchers as early as possible in the research process.\r\n\r\nThe lack of confidence in their data-management training compounds researchers’ apprehension about the ethical issues contained in their data. Researchers are naturally—and rightfully—conservative about the potential risks in sharing data, especially if they are not convinced they can protect their respondents’ confidentiality, or that they have obtained appropriate consent—issues that the difficulties of cross-cultural communication make more complex. Without such assurances that these ethical imperatives can be addressed, many researchers are unlikely to invest in archiving their materials. “In many cases, their desire to avoid the ethical risks of inappropriate data release may outweigh the costs of potential data loss.”<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn57\">[lvii]</a>\r\n\r\nBecause of these interrelated concerns, it is critical that the archival and data curation systems available to ethnographic researchers have multiple and fine-grained levels of access and privacy controls. Tools must be developed that can appropriately manage confidential data and that allow researchers, working in conjunction with their respondents, to exercise control over their data, administer who has access to it, and account for culturally specific restrictions on data use.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn58\">[lviii]</a> One example of a system attempting to address these requirements is the Murkutu content management system (<a href=\"http://www.mukurtu.org/\">http://www.mukurtu.org/</a>), which makes cultural protocols a fundamental part of access to materials. This allows for the easy creation of fine-grained and culturally appropriate user groups with specifically defined usage rights, and it is being developed in cooperation with indigenous communities.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn59\">[lix]</a>\r\n\r\nBecause the nature of ethnographic materials makes them potentially subject to ongoing and evolving dilemmas of confidentiality and consent, archivists and data managers should understand that these materials may require ongoing curation, preferably through processes and procedures that incorporate researchers in a collaborative and meaningful way. Although many researchers would welcome the ability to more easily share their data, particularly in collaborative projects and in response to data-sharing requirements, they are almost universally resistant to any arrangement in which they would relinquish control over access to the data. As one anthropologist described:\r\n\r\nPeople don’t hesitate, at all, to share data with collaborators that they trust. … If you provide a mechanism for collaboration, even if it’s just Google Docs or something, you know, people share data easily and freely. It’s when it becomes an anonymous process that they seem to get balky. (1-02-100511)\r\n\r\nThe goal of making materials publically available online, then, will require archival systems and processes that are cognizant of the complex social relationships embedded within ethnographic materials, not only between the researcher and his or her respondents, but also between and among the many stakeholders in ethnographic data. The development of additional policies, ethical guidelines, and best practices by disciplinary organizations, funding agencies, universities, and cultural institutions could further aid researchers and archivists in navigating the ethical dilemmas contained in the archival process.\r\n\r\nBecause much ethnographic data is collected by individuals in relatively small and often idiosyncratic datasets, it is especially vulnerable to loss due to benign neglect or lack or resources, even if the data are historically unique. A sociologist described one such vulnerable dataset:\r\n\r\nWe did life histories of 45 people in a [church] congregation in [central Pennsylvania town]. . . . It’s probably the only body of material on a single congregation of that depth and complexity that exists, and I’m just too lazy to have figured out what to do with it and write it up and everything, but you could imagine somewhere somebody who wants to do research on congregations would find this incredibly valuable. But what’s going to happen to it [in the long term]? And what’s going to happen to it is, the copies I have will end up in a trash can, and my computer hard drive will eventually crash or get outmoded or get erased, and that’ll be the end of it [if there isn’t a place to archive it]. (2-13-111411)\r\n\r\nIn order to prevent these losses, data management specialists and archivists must specifically curate these materials. They must also build relationships with ethnographers to resolve the unique ethical dilemmas these data present and the uneasy tensions between researchers’ desire to share data publically and obligations to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the individuals and communities they study.\r\n\r\nFinally, despite the acknowledged importance and value of archival materials to the disciplines and future researchers, academic rewards systems offer very little payoff for the work that goes into making ethnographic materials available, and ethnographic researchers are often under-resourced in the funding, time, and personnel support needed for preparing materials for archiving. <a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn60\">[lx]</a> Archivists must therefore work to make archival systems and the development of archival processes and policies as straightforward for researchers as possible, ideally assisting in integrating the development of metadata and other secondary materials (for example, codebooks, explanatory materials, finding aids, and ontologies) necessary to archiving and ensuring the long-term usefulness of primary data as early in the research process as possible. Likewise, funding agencies should improve funding for long-term data management, preservation, and curatorial services, either directly or via guidelines to institutions for recouping indirect costs, especially when the grant mandates archiving or public data accessibility. By providing these supports, archivists and funders would greatly assist researchers in responding to the imperatives of providing access to data and assuring the confidentiality and consent of their respondents, as well as resolving the ethical dilemmas contained in their data, thereby helping assure the preservation of irreplaceable ethnographic information.\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" />\r\n\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref48\">[xlviii]</a> Carusi and Jirotka, “From Data Archive,” 294; Parry and Mauthner, “Whose Data,” 146; AAA, Code of Ethics, III.A.4.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref49\">[xlix]</a> The Society of American Archivists Oral History Section maintains a webpage summarizing the case and providing links to relevant documents at http://www2.archivists.org/groups/oral-history-section/the-belfast-case-information-for-saa-members.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref50\">[l]</a> Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives,” 471.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref51\">[li]</a> See Carusi and Jirotka, “From Data Archive,” 294-95.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref52\">[lii]</a> See Corti, Day, and Backhouse,\" Confidentiality and Informed Consent,\" 4.4, on the expense of creating anonymized archives.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref53\">[liii]</a> ICPSR’s “Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving Phase 5: Preparing Data for Sharing” provides a model for these processes. See <a href=\"http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/guide/chapter5.html\">http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/guide/chapter5.html</a>.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref54\">[liv]</a> Parezo, “Preserving Anthropology’s Heritage,” 285.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref55\">[lv]</a> Silverman, “Introduction,” 6.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref56\">[lvi]</a> Jahnke, Asher, and Keralis, <i>The Problem of Data</i>.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref57\">[lvii]</a> Ibid.<i>,</i> 17.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref58\">[lviii]</a> Ibid.<i>,</i> 17-18.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref59\">[lix]</a> A list of community groups and organizations participating in the Mukurtu project is available at http://www.mukurtu.org/community.html.\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref60\">[lx]</a> The NSF’s recent decision to list datasets as one of the research products to be included in the section of its grant proposals where researchers describe their qualifications does suggest, however, that the current rewards system may gradually be changing (see <a href=\"http://nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp\">http://nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp</a>).\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n</div>','Curating the Ethnographic Moment','','inherit','open','open','','4698-revision-14','','','2013-06-17 23:46:13','2013-06-17 23:46:13','',4698,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4698-revision-14/',0,'revision','',0),