Volume 47, Issue 2

Institutional archiving of media is neither new nor strange. The United States Library of Congress has been preserving printed materials, newspapers, photographs, film, and even websites for decades—if not centuries. After seven years, in later 2017, the initiative to build a Twitter Archive came to a halt. Through a textual analysis of policy papers, preservation theories and press releases, this study illustrates the social, cultural, and symbolic challenges of institutional archiving of digital media.

This article will explore the idea of the archive as medium, with sub-themes of neutrality, silence, and truth. An archive can serve as the intermediary in the construction of the archival series and collections around a central theme or scope. The messages bound in the archival container are selected to fit into an archival series or collection to reiterate or document a particular aspect. Archival collections have the power and effect of creating cumulative viewpoints over time by way of the contained messages. Selected case studies of more recent user-generated digital archives will be explored in context to these themes; such as A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland and Take Back the Archive (University of Virginia).

The literature about disaster preparedness, especially digital disaster in the library, is particularly limited in Indonesia. With the growing number of library collections in digital form, it is important for libraries to implement strategies for the protection of digital collections from various disaster threats. The purpose of this study is to provide information on the readiness of selected special libraries in Indonesia on the issue of digital disaster. A questionnaire containing 15 closed and open-ended questions was disseminated through an online survey to 10 selected special libraries in Jakarta and Bogor, Indonesia. The results indicate that most libraries have implemented digital data protection and are able to analyze any potential digital disaster threats that may occur. Most of the libraries do not yet have specific policies regarding digital collections, however. The minimal number of digital collections compared to the number of printed collections is assumed to be the cause of the lack of attention and protection of digital collections. Consequently, libraries need to develop a digital preservation policy first before implementing a digital disaster management plan.

Rights in Records by Design is a three-year Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project that is running from 2017 to 2019. This project brings together an interdisciplinary research team to investigate the recordkeeping and archival needs for those whose childhoods are impacted by child welfare and protection systems. Using a participatory action research approach the team of recordkeeping, historical, social work, early childhood education and community researchers are exploring the design of Lifelong Living Archives for those who experience childhood out-of-home Care. The goal of research and in designing the Archive is to re-imagine recordkeeping frameworks, processes and systems in support of responsive and accountable child-centred out-of-home Care, and to enable historical justice and reconciliation. Chief Investigator Associate Professor Joanne Evans and post-doctoral researcher Dr. Gregory Rolan from the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Australia talk to PDT&C about this project.

This is a report on the tenth annual Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI), which was held from July 9 to 13, 2018, and hosted by the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.