Over the past week, in our ASTU class, working with archives in the Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) was a complete new experience. Reading my colleagues’ blogs especially those working with the Chung Collections seem to be fascinated working with old rusty historical documents. However, flipping through the Douglas Coupland Fonds was somewhat familiar to me as these archives are contemporary, meaning they include hotel receipts, name-cards, Christmas cards, birthday cards, invitation letter, his art pieces (which were unexpectedly heavy…). They were things that we see in our daily lives, not necessarily in the RBSC, rather, I felt I was organizing my collection of documents while organizing my bookshelf…
However, working with contemporary archives like Douglas Coupland’s led me to wonder about digital archives. Many questions rushed into my mind, such as, what are digital archives? How is it different from archives present in the library? What are some implications of digital archives? and finally, how do I feel about digital archiving?
According to this journal, digital archives AKA “online archives” are different from physical historical archives in that their contents are easily reproducible and may have been reproduced from elsewhere. Digital archives are known to be fragile as technology is continually changing and also having to maintain these resources require “conscious effort and continual investment”. Implications include:
- Loss of tradition of keeping archives in libraries
- Lack of the archival value because it is no longer “rare” or “special” as many people world-wide have access to it
- Ownership/ privacy is devalued
These are some of the many implications of digital archiving. Since the overarching purpose of archiving is to preserve unique documents and as Sarah Romkey, the UBC archivist defined archive as “documents created or received by a person or organization in the ordinary course of their work or life”, some archives must be kept online and some in the library archival collection. I am not trying to suggest solutions to digital archiving because I am not an expert in archiving; I am just writing out of interest that led me to digital archiving after flipping through Douglas Coupland’s archives.
Displaying archival materials on the Internet benefits in many ways, for example, giving accessibility to people who live in distanced areas. However, due to increasing “de-privatization” of information in the Internet world, some archival materials should be categorized separately from the rare archives to archives that are not put in high significance. Here comes into conflict of what to include and exclude among the archives, however, it depends on how the archivists arrange the archives.