Maureen Pennock

Archiving web site resources: a records management view

In this paper, we propose the use of records management principles to identify and manage Web site resources with enduring value as records. Current Web archiving activities, collaborative or organisational, whilst extremely valuable in their own right, often do not and cannot incorporate requirements for proper records management. Material collected under such initiatives therefore may not be reliable or authentic from a legal or archival perspective, with insufficient metadata collected about the object during its active life, and valuable materials destroyed whilst ephemeral items are maintained. Education, training, and collaboration between stakeholders are integral to avoiding these risks and successfully preserving valuable Web-based materials.

DCC Workshop Report: E-mail Curation: Practical Approaches for Long-term Preservation and Access, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, April 24 - 25, 2006

A report on the Digital Curation Centre workshop held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in April 2006 to explore practical approaches for managing, preserving and re-using e-mail records.

Digital Applications for Cultural and Heritage Institutions

Computing in the arts, humanities and heritage sectors is becoming more pervasive, and increasingly sophisticated technologies are being developed to capture, explore, and disseminate information regarding artefacts, historical knowledge, and cultural inheritance. Conferences and symposia are central to the complex industry which has built up around using computational techniques to facilitate novel research and increased public access to cultural heritage. These are essential for fostering crossfertilisation of knowledge and expertise between “memory institutions” such as libraries, archives, museums, and archaeological and historic sites; academic disciplines such as history, archaeology, and art history; and practitioners in the computer industry. Often, proceedings of these conferences appear online, or selected papers are published in journals, but rarely is a snapshot of conference papers from across different years and disciplines brought together in a comprehensive publication to give a panorama of the diverse research explored across the “multiplicative relationship: culture x technology” (pg. 2).