While studying the philosophies and technologies of library 2.0, I was curious about whether the same ideas and tools can be applied to archives, and about what they say about this 2.0 movement in the archival world.
I looked through all the journals in the archives we subscribe to at St. Kate, and many websites of institutions that represent archivists, but I couldn’t find vigorous discussions about 2.0 in this method, although I did find a few articles on the web almost by chance. Next, I tried to find some blogs posted by archivists to see how they embrace this portion of the 2.0 movement. Yes, there are many archivists who keep their blogs. I haven’t looked over many of them yet, but my initial impression is that they are not really active either. Some of them looked too formal and long to be blog posts.
I want to look into LOC’s and Boston Public Library’s flickr projects too because it seems to be an easy and effective way to apply 2.0 technologies to archival environments.
Archives do need to reach out. When I work at the archives, I see that many people don’t even know what archives are. Sometimes, I get very strange inquiries because people think that archives are just for anything old.
I think there are many persuasive reasons to worry about the future of archives. The issue of accessibility to information is even more serious in archives than in libraries. I was glad to find some efforts to apply 2.0 ideas to online finding aid to make it more usable. It is so exciting to think of the possibilities of making collective knowledge of archives users available to other users. It is definitely worth looking into these new technologies to improve services at the archives. I want to go back to my research. It’s really fun.
I just recently became the archivist at Misericordia University and as part of my interview, I had to give a presentation. My presentation was on what I called Archives 2.0 which is a blending of web 2.0, library 2.0 and traditional archival methodologies. At the time that I gave my presentation, I didn’t know there were others who were using the term “Archives 2.0″ so I thought I was being innovative. Although the term has been used, like you, I don’t think many archivists are using the term or the technologies as inefficiently or as effectively as they could be. My hope is that our archives can be innovative and get our materials out there for researchers.
Good idea to explore how those big libraries are using Flickr. It’s one of my favorite examples of a social site being adopted and used well by high profile libraries. How could we argue with that?