The social processes by which a community comes to agree on a common technical vocabulary such as a metadata scheme, and the tools to facilitate its evolution by a distributed community, are of great interest to me -- anyone got any case studies on how this works (or fails to)?

Simon Buckingham Shum (S.Buckingham.Shum@open.ac.uk)

Margaret

Thanks for your replies.

My current solution to the problem of preserving culturally sensitive material (the digital surrogates of secret/scared tjurunga) is to put it into a password protected area. This might also be the kind of place to put my unedited collection of electronic conversation relating to the FOD. The idea being that it will travel into the future along with the material it relates to.

This is not just convesation with the NLA but with other individuals and organisations.

I notice that this area has not been captured by Pandora.

Is there a reason?

What are the logistics of capturing a password protected area?

Regards Simon

>>Unfortunately the electronic mediums are frequently robbing us of the record of these communications.

Unfortunately, I think this is happening. We must train ourselves to take the electronic record as seriously as the paper. Certainly NLA management is reminding us that we must put electronic documents on file so there is an awareness here of the issue. The Electronic Unit and PANDORA are retaining electronic correspondence.

>I would assume (perhaps wrongly) that sitting on your Library Registry or even your own or Margaret's hard drive are communications about the FOD which I don't know about.

No, the only communications on the file at this stage are those between you and us. However, you are right in that we could write to someone else about FOD and put it on the file and you would not necessarily know.

>What are you going to do with them ?

They are part of the NLA archives and will be managed by the Electronic Management System in the same way that all Library correspondence is managed under archival principles as dictated by the Commonwealth Archives Act.

>Who has access ?

Now, Library staff and anyone who is given access under Freedom of Information provisions. In the future, it will depend on how they are dealt with under the Archives Act. If they are considered to fall into an important category of records they will be preserved indefinitely and will eventually become open for researchers to use. If they are not required for permanent retention, they will eventually be destroyed. I'm not fully informed the regulations but I think that would be about 30 years hence.

>Do we take the same view of these objects as some Aboriginal commentators and say, "let them go".

Depends on what they are. Some we will judge to be important enough to be retained indefinitely. Other we will say are not worth it.

>Do we allow records to be erased ?

Yes, the ones we decide are not worth preserving. We may not always make the right decisions. As I think you have pointed out, we don't always read correctly what future generations will value, but behind the whole profession of librarianship is the notion of what we should collect/retain now for future use. I think in general we are reasonable skilled and considerate in making these decisions.

Having worked in the Manuscript Section for 5 years, I have an archival perspective as well as that of a librarian. We can preserve now without necessarily giving access now. By that I mean we can recognise that letters may be of interest in the future, but be too sensitive to be available for general access now. So we collect them, but put access restrictions on them for a period. So we meet both needs - for sensitivity now and information in the future. This is just as manageable with electronic letters as it is with paper letters.

Margaret (mphillip@nla.gov.au)

> The context is important. From my perspective it is important that the FOD be transparent and that we are all able to explore the ways in which a work can show (or cannot show) its own making. After all, if a work doesn't finish, then all it has to show is its construction. This is probably the hardest paradigm shift that people have to make in understanding this medium.

Agreed, but not all creators will see it this way. Generally we are of the view that any material generated during the creation process should be captured for posterity, but until there is demand for access it may not be made available from our archive in the first instance (see also below).

>What are you going to do with them ?

They are stored in our new electronic records management system, which the PANDORA archive managers will keep track of using a hard link from the PANDORA archive when it is fully functional.

If you are asking how they will be searchable in the future, that is a job for another working party - the AusGILS working party which is looking at a whole of government search access point for records within agencies. Their full report is due at the end of January 1998.

Debbie (dcampbel@nla.gov.au)

Dear Simon

More comments in situ.

you are probably aware that I have posted some of it as encrusted conversation about digital preservation.

No I wasn't aware. By `posted' do you mean on your FOD site?

> You might keep these as well - being a librarian.

Yes I do, as Library business on an electronic Registry file, confined to the eyes of Library staff only.

>how they form a narrative in themselves?

I would be appalled if you had put my 'fob' message up on your site. I certainly haven't kept it.

>I am ambivalent about this as I am sure you would be.

I am quite uncomfortable about it. When I write messages to you it has been on the understanding that they are for your eyes and perhaps, at your discretion, for those of some of your colleagues. I had certainly not considered that, it you are posting them to your site, they could be open to anyone in the world. Whenever I write, I do always try to be discrete (you will laugh at this) but nevertheless it is disconcerting to learn that a much wider audience might be reading them.

If you do wish to post a particular message from me, I would ask you to seek my permission first. I believe that I have the right to ask you this. If I write you a letter on paper and send it to you, you own the physical letter but I still own the copyright in the letter. So if you become rich and famous and want to publish your correspondence, in order to not to infringe copyright you are obliged to seek my permission to publish. In the electronic situation, in putting the letter on your site, you are in effect publishing it.

>it might restrict/restrain/influence the conversation

It certainly would constrain what I may say.

>I'm not proposing anything here, just thinking about this form of conversation - the story it tells - where it lives - what becomes of it - is it metadata ? - is it something we can't talk about ?

It's not metadata. These messages are documents, objects, in themselves.

>Please don't misunderstand me here, I'm not just talking about `our' conversation as if we had some relationship other than the one we have. I'm talking about these kinds of conversations.

Understood

>I know for sure that they are not machine readable. Do you have any thoughts on this ? Take your time.

Expressed above.

Cheers, Margaret