The Quantum Archivist

Digital Pioneers web site

A few months ago I posted a bit about Digital Pioneers, a project I was involved with that has as it’s aim a project to document a period of time (c.1994 – 2005) and a type of project (i.e. one that transformed analog cultural materials into digital form) that explored the possibilities of digitization of material that was commonly held by libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies in the words of the people who were present at the creation. The original project was organized around a class project at the University of Denver’s Library and Information Science Program. After the class ended, responsibility for Digital Pioneers was transferred to the Digital Initiatives office here at the Penrose Library, where we will continue to develop the project and interview more subjects as time and resources permit.

Our goal is to put a human face on the development of cultural heritage digitization. The story of the content and the technology development is told in the peer-reviewed publications and white papers, but we want to find out what people were actually thinking and attempting to do when they embarked on building the digital future; the challenges they faced, and the insights they developed as agents of change.

For now, there is a somewhat eclectic (but based on specific criteria) gathering of reminiscences, observations, and visions from a small group of people we were able to contact and interview in the time that we had. More interviews are in the pipeline, and many more people have already been identified as potential interview subjects. If you have a suggestion for someone who should be interviewed, please fill out the Suggestion Form on the Digital Pioneers web site. And for now, enjoy hearing the stories from a time and place that is fast becoming only a memory.

Greg Crane, the Editor-in-Chief of the Perseus Digital Library and a colleague from way back, always used to say “Content is King!” when referring to the quality or value of a digital resource. The more content there is in a digital resource, the more useful it is to the researcher. This lends itself quite nicely to the idea of managing archives at the quantum level, because the quantum level is where the content is.

As I have said before, we should let our content float freely and find its own place, at least in the arena of discovery and access. Spending hours or days crafting detailed and exhaustive collection and series descriptions is a waste of time, and perhaps even self-indulgent. If you want to be a historian, then go do that, it is a different activity, and an honorable one.  But if you want to be an archivist, create attributes, metadata, and description at the quantum level. That’s where your true value and service to researchers lies.

Processing in the quantum sense is making content available with attributes and opening up potential connections to other pieces of content. Getting the content out there for people to discover and use is the thing to do. I don’t think I have ever had anyone say to me, “Gee, that collection description was a thing of beauty, I wish it was longer.”  Because, people want what they want, and what they want is content. So spend your time processing content, and not writing prose.

Your value will come and be measured in the number of links to your content from other sources, and the number of times it is used and re-used.