[ICA-EGAD-RiC] RiC-CM: Indigenous perspectives & social media

[Greg Bak]

Hello,

A quick introduction. I am an assistant professor of history (archival studies) at the University of Manitoba in Canada. While my principal research areas are in digital archives, the history of digital archiving and archival decolonization, I have a strong interest in archival description and was involved in the recent discussions of the Expert Advisory Group on the Future of RAD.

EGAD is to be commended for its work on RiC-CM to date. It is evident that the committee has taken seriously its mandate to consider how to update archival description while still respecting our past approaches, including our vast legacy of existing archival descriptions.

Thank you for undertaking this work, and especially for following a truly open and consultative process that includes sufficient lead-time for non-members to read and discuss RiC-CM before submitting feedback. Thanks as well for establishing this listserv as a method of asynchronous, dynamic discussion.

My questions today are pretty preliminary. I am still working through the conceptual model. It is entirely possible that you have already considered the issues that I raise, or that they can be accommodated within the existing model. For the moment I wanted to raise them as concerns, while I continue to think about the model and how they might apply.

Indigenous Perspectives

The RiC-CM introduction acknowledges certain weaknesses in EGAD’s membership in terms of national, regional and even hemispheric representation. My particular concern is for the lack of Indigenous perspectives on social memory evident within the conceptual model. I believe that archiving should be understood as one of a range of social memory practices. An historical understanding of settler colonialism, moreover, demonstrates that archiving is not a culturally neutral technology of memory, but one that has been prejudicial to Indigenous worldviews, forms of social memory and rights in the past.

While Canada, the United States and Australia are all represented in EGAD, it isn’t clear how Indigenous perspectives from these nations (as well as other nations with significant splits between mainstream cultures and minority-Indigenous cultures, such as Finland and Brazil) are being addressed in the work of the committee. It may well be that these perspectives have been considered, but I don’t see evidence of this either in the report or its bibliography. I note particularly that the historical overview on p. 4 of the introduction offers a very Eurocentric account of the history of archives. If, as stated on p. 1, “EGAD has focused on describing the world from an archival perspective,” then we should acknowledge the role archives have played and often continue to play in global colonial systems. We should include this history of colonization as part of archival history. Ideally, we would incorporate Indigenous voices and perspectives into archival standards such as RiC-CM, as per UNDRIP and the findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

We are fortunate that there has been quite a bit of work done in this area in the past few decades. Some of it, particularly important articles by Tom Nesmith, Chris Hurley and Wendy Duff and Verne Harris, are included in your bibliography, though not referenced in your report. Additionally, the Australian Trust and Technology project explored the colonial history of archives and has helped articulate Australian Indigenous perspectives on archives, social memory and recordkeeping, and the systems that underwrite these practices. Kim Christen’s work on Mukurtu CMS offers another take on types and functions of metadata in this Indigenous-focused CMS. Camille Callison, David George Shongo, Jennifer O’Neal and other Indigenous practitioners and scholars have explored North American Indigenous perspectives on archives and social memory. The Protocols for Native American Archival Materials offers advice from Indigenous archivists and allies on how to incorporate Indigenous perspectives on materials that are held in non-Indigenous institutions. Ongoing work at Canada’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (located on the University of Manitoba campus) has begun to explore the implications of archival decolonization for metadata regimes and for archival management in general.

In my preliminary look at RiC-CM, I particularly noted the lack of an acknowledgement of Indigenous perspectives on archives and other forms of social memory in the introduction. I am still thinking about how these might be accounted for within the conceptual model itself. The model allows for multiple provenances, and might accommodate the kind of Indigenous intellectual property regimes and access rights that Kim Christen focuses on in her work, including Mukurtu CMS. Nonetheless, I think it would be appropriate to have the model reviewed by some specialists in Indigenous archives, social memory, intellectual property and access rights to make sure that it can accommodate these practices and perspectives. Moreover, it seems to me that the brief historical comments in the introduction could be revised to promote a more pluralistic and less Eurocentric understanding of archival history and of the meanings of archives.

Social Media Data Management

Another gap that I noticed in the report and its bibliography in my preliminary reading is on social media data accumulation and management techniques, including the use of algorithms in digital records management and discovery. This, it seems to me, should be a key aspect of any emerging, digitally-focused archival description regime. As writers including Elizabeth Yakel, Catherine Hobbs, and Katie Shilton and Ramesh Srinivasan have argued, there is a close connection between archival description, archival management and archival appraisal. The way that we conceptualize records will affect all of these processes. As we move from the incredible abundance of analogue, digital and hybrid records in the post-WW2 era to the exponentially greater superabundance of the digital present, it is increasingly more important that we expand our tool set to include new techniques, including the use of algorithmic approaches to valuation, acquisition, management and discovery.

I have argued in the past that one way for us to start to sketch out what this might look like is to explore how valuation and management is effected in social networks, and perhaps to learn from it. My article “Continuous Classification” builds on David Bearman’s essential work in the 1990s on item-level management and explores how current archival standards work against such an approach. A second article of mine, currently under review for publication, which I have presented at various conferences, explores more directly how data management in social media differs from archival and bibliographic description. As in “Continuous Classification”, I suggest that current approaches to archival description lack the ability to incorporate social media style data management both conceptually and physically.

I am still puzzling through the question of whether RiC-CM could accommodate this kind of data management. As EGAD points out in its introduction, a precondition of the project is to remain rooted in the current ICA suite of descriptive standards. I fear that this condition, while important, may have predetermined certain responses to emerging areas of digital information management (emerging areas for archives and recordkeeping, despite being well established elsewhere). In particular, I find it difficult to see how the RiC-CM regime would manage the kind of granular data about information resource access, viewing and use that could underwrite approaches to discovery and valuation that would build on advances made in social media data management, or that are envisioned in Victoria Lemieux’s recent work on data visualization. However we move forward, we need to recognize that, while it is important to build bridges from our past practices to our future practices, our digital-centric future will require new tools to understand the new complexities of provenance and custody (briefly addressed in the RiC-CM introduction) as well as the valuation, management and discovery of our holdings (perhaps addressed in RiC-CM, though it could be done more explicitly) – and even in the shifting nature of digital information (inadequately addressed in RiC-CM, though perhaps gestured towards with the inclusion of record parts).

Finally, there are two projects that I didn’t see represented in your bibliography despite their relevance to the conceptual model. I know how much work it is to update standards once they are created. It is far better to try to include as many perspectives and as much previous work as possible in the first go-round. The first of these projects is Victoria Lemieux’s project on data visualizations and archival description. Since you consciously align your work with the notion of data visualization, I was surprised to see you cite her earlier paper on Jamaican banking records, but not her 2014 and 2015 articles on “third order” archival interfaces and visual analytics. The second is the recently circulated report from DPLA on content aggregations. Since this report was only just released, it is understandable that it isn’t in your bibliography. I thought that I would point it out, since it is an interesting read and very relevant to your work.

I hope that this posting promotes discussion of these concerns on this list and elsewhere. I hope to be reassured that EGAD has considered these questions, and that my perception of these voids in the report is based on my own incomplete grasp of your work. I am appreciative of ICA’s leadership on this, and of the excellent and extensive work that EGAD has already done.

I would be happy to further discuss any of the points raised in this email.

Best,

Greg

Greg Bak
Assistant Professor, Master's Program in Archival Studies
University of Manitoba, Department of History
greg.bak at umanitoba.ca
(204) 272-1578

Archival Studies Program Web site:
http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/departments/history/archives/index.html