Expanding collecting strategies to include new forms of media and documents, including born-digital content, web harvesting and social media harvesting.
Collecting Cultures and Practices at Wellcome
Jenny Haynes, Head, Collections & Research, Wellcome Library
Jenny will provide a brief case study of how collecting cultures and practices are changing at Wellcome Collection, with a focus on library and archive collections. She will concentrate on three major changes:
- a new emphasis on diversity of voice;
- taking holistic acquisition decisions regardless of format or medium;
- and actively seeking out new types of material rather than plugging gaps in existing holdings.
Shelf Life: The Changing Nature of Archival Collecting in a Digital Age
Laura Millar, Independent Archival Consultant and Scholar
What is the role of the archival institution – the repository that collects, preserves, and makes available the documentary memory of a society – in an age when everyone creates, uses, and keeps their own documentary evidence themselves?
Today, as we count more smartphones than people on earth, we all carry our lives in our pockets, in photographs, text messages, emails, sound recordings, and more, stored in devices the size of our hands, and in a “cloud” we cannot see.
In this short talk, Dr. Laura Millar, an independent consultant and scholar with 35 years’ experience in records, archives, and information management, will speculate on the key changes facing custodial institutions such as libraries as they adapt to the new realities of archival collecting in the 21st century. She will address questions such as:
- What changes in technology and society are moving archivists away from traditional (post-creation, custodial) methods?
- What examples of innovation and change can we use to consider new and different approaches to archival management, from acquisition to outreach?
- What is the potential for collaborations and partnerships – within organizations, with other institutions, or with the creators of records and archives?
- What strategic actions should an organization like McGill take as it explores the potential for new and different approaches to archival collection and care?
The centralized custodial model that has defined archival practice for centuries is giving way to a much less controlled process: society’s documentary evidence may be “owned” by no one yet available to everyone. What will live on the shelves of archives and libraries in this digital future?
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