Personal Digital Archiving 2017

An archivist in the lab with a codebook: Using archival theory and “classic” detective skills to encourage reuse of personal data (Carly Dearborn, Purdue University Libraries)

Presentation Details:

• Journalism Archive Management (JAM): Preparing journalism students to manage their personal digital assets and diffuse JAM best practices into the media industry (Dorothy Carner & Edward McCain, University of Missouri)
  
  The University of Missouri (MU) School of Journalism is one of the leading institutions for media training and industry-oriented research. In collaboration with MU Libraries and the school’s Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, a personal digital archive (PDA) learning model has been developed and deployed in order to prepare journalism-school students, faculty and staff for their ongoing information storage and access needs. The MU J-School has created a set of PDA best practices for journalists and branded it: Journalism Archive Management (JAM). Our presentation outlines the who, what, when, where, why and how of integrating JAM ideas and practices into the hands-on learning process at MU. This exemplifies the Missouri Method of learning by doing, which has been practiced for over a century at the School of Journalism on the University of Missouri System flagship campus in Columbia. 

• An archivist in the lab with a codebook: Using archival theory and “classic” detective skills to encourage reuse of personal data (Carly Dearborn, Purdue University Libraries). 
  
  One of the biggest data management challenges novice researchers face is joining a new research lab. Not only are they joining a new team and research project, but also are dealing with new data and collaboration practices. Additionally, many research labs have legacy issues; students turn over every few years and they often take with them the institutional knowledge that helped the project or lab run smoothly. The majority of instruction around the topic of data management focuses on developing sustainable habits, but few resources address the challenges surrounding the “data handoff” event, when one idiosyncratic data producer passes data onto another idiosyncratic data producer. Archivists are well versed in dealing with idiosyncratic records creators. The basic detective work archivists perform daily such as asking who, what, where, when, and why can also applicable in the laboratory setting to understand the context, structure, and usability of an unfamiliar dataset.
  
  This presentation will discuss my efforts to help novice researchers - at undergraduate and graduate levels - understand unfamiliar data by applying basic archival processing methods. I designed a workshop inspired by the Society of Georgia Archivists’ personal digital archiving activities and building on current primary source and data management instruction at Purdue. Through the workshop and supplementary activities, I introduced attendees to archival concepts and techniques which can be applied to familiarize researchers with new data structures. Additionally, I demonstrated how the same techniques to explore new data can also be used to keep files and data usable in the long-term. Applying lessons from archival processing, data management, and personal digital archiving, researchers can ensure their own data structure can weather everything from staffing to software changes.