The Quantum Archivist

As archivists, we are always trying to find the best way to connect to our user community to give them what they want in the best way possible. The idea of quantum archives is to connect people to the content in as granular a way as possible while preserving the opportunity for them to contextualize the content in ways that they want.   I was recently involved in a conversation where someone who wouldn’t ever consider himself an Archivist put this idea in the most succinct way.

Thought Equity Motion is a for profit stock footage fulfillment and video asset management service that manages the video libraries of some of the biggest media organizations in the world. They happen to be based in Denver and I’ve had a couple of opportunities  over the past few months to talk with Frank Cardello, the EVP for Corporate Development at TEM. TEM has just launched a joint venture with the NCAA called the “NCAA Vault.” Timed to coincide with the beginning of the annual Men’s basketball tournament, the Vault features “ten years of full games and highlights” of the Sweet 16. As a basketball fan I appreciate this opportunity, as an archivist I am even more impressed with how TEM and the NCAA thought about presenting historical information.

A model for archival access?

While I can watch an entire game, I can also use search terms to limit to particular teams, years, and players. There are also some pre-defined categories like “great shots” or  “great finishes.”  Next, but not finally, you have the opportunity to search (using a text-based search box) through the play-by play track of the video footage for a particular moment or play within a game. You can select this clip and share it in other applications.

Frank said that the idea behind this approach was that people initially don’t want to watch the entire game, they want to “experience the moment” and share that moment with others. It was the purpose of the Vault to allow people to experience the moment.

Although he was talking about entertainment consumers, I thought that this was an interesting way to view all types of historical research. Researchers seldom want everything in a collection or a book, but those “moments” that help them prove their points, support their thesis or just inform themselves. This seems to me to be the essence of quantum archives, to reduce archival material to a collection of “moments” that can be used, shared, and re-used both in ways that we define–the pre-defined “great shots”–and the unexpected ways that result from users making their own moment out of a larger whole.

I’d like to coin a new phrase that I think I’ll add to the next version of the Quickstart Guide. It is “Deliver the Moment.” It simply means that we can manage our content according to traditional principles, but always seek to deliver that content in ways that resonate with our users.

I don’t know how scalable this idea is in terms of delivering real-life archival access. The NCAA Vault, for now, focuses on just one sport (Men’s basketball), in a very short time frame (10 years), and over a very limited scope (the last three rounds of the annual tournament). Given these limited parameters it is relatively easy to craft a satisfying user experience based on the principle of delivering the moment. There are plans to add more sports and a greater time span. I’m rooting for them.