Sadly, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about topics that impact DPS.  I’ve heard all sorts of things that are either mistaken or misguided.  For us, the key is to work transparently and honestly with your customers (or rather, as we call them, partners) and to help the customer to develop the knowledge and skills they will need to move forward on this journey – and putting more information like this out there hopefully helps.

First, let’s talk bout what Digital Preservation is, and how important it is for a range of areas – not just collecting organisations.  

There are various definitions of Digital Preservation:

• Digital Preservation refers to the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary  …(digital preservation) refers to all of the actions required to maintain access to digital materials beyond the limits of media failure or technological and organisational change. (Digital Preservation Coalition)
• In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavour to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies, and it combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and “born-digital” content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time (Wikipedia – which we don’t usually quote too often but this one is nicely holistic)
• Digital preservation consists of the processes aimed at ensuring the continued accessibility of digital materials. To do this involves finding ways to re-present what was originally presented to users by a combination of software and hardware tools acting on data. (UNESCO)

They’re all well and good, but the simple way that we think of Digital Preservation is this: it’s the way in which you make sure that the digital assets that you have under your care last forever.  

But what does that actually mean?  Well, it can be an addition to a digitisation program, but it’s definitely not just a hard disc sitting on a desk somewhere.  It’s a combination of a range of things – careful planning, careful ingestion of digital files, careful storage and monitoring of those digital files, a lot of skill and knowledge development in your people, and above all, careful and regular review of how you treat these digital files.

So you want a Digital Preservation System? Let’s talk about what this looks like for you moving forward.

First of all, we firmly believe that you need to understand exactly what this journey to a full live digital preservation system will look like before you start doing anything.  The journey itself will probably include stages of roadmapping, digitising or collecting born-digital materials, implementing the Digital Preservation System (DPS), training your people and then going live, as shown below.

But what do each of these mean and entail?

Roadmapping

Here we really are talking about a discovery and planning phase for your journey into the realm of digital preservation.  You need to be aware of what this journey is going to look like so that you can prepare for it and get all the right gear ready!

We recommend that organisations work on this through a basic series of capacity analyses – looking at some of the key pillars of people, systems, infrastructure, data and processes.  By doing this sort of a review you can then work out the gaps of what you need to have running for your desired future state – of preserving your digital information.  At Gaia Resources we do this as collaboratively as we possibly can, through interviews, workshops and all sorts of other methods.

Once you know where you are, and the gaps you need to fill to get to where you want to go – then it’s a matter of eliciting options, determining the pros and cons of each and then putting that into a roadmap.

Digitisation

You may have already started collecting born-digital materials, or you may be creating them from your existing collection by digitising them. Whilst Digitisation isn’t Digital Preservation, it can be a step towards. It. 

Digitisation is the process of taking something that isn’t digital and making a digital representation of it.  This is usually things like scanning pages, or books, but can be doing complex 3D scans of objects, or transferring from historical tape media to digital media.  Digitisation is a big and complex beast, and it requires a lot of expertise to be done right.

Some organisations may have already started digitisation, but you will need to be looking ahead to how you’ll preserve these digital materials for the long term, store it securely so it’s not lost, and prepare for migration of the data about these digital objects (something we talk about later).

We do recommend that the digitisation component of a DPS implementation can start once you’ve done the roadmap – i.e. once you’ve made some decisions about how you will be operating the DPS and the sorts of decisions you will make around storage quantities, file formats and so on, you can then start digitising – and storing it in a secure way so that it won’t get lost.

But you can start digitising in a “do no harm” approach like this pretty quickly after the roadmap is underway.

Implementation

In this stage, you will be well on your way to your digital electric dreams. This is going to be a complex information technology, business process and risk management project – and like most projects, you will also need a good change management process around it.

The way in which this stage will play out will depend on what you’ve decided in the roadmap, and where you’ve decided to go in terms of the technical aspects of the project.  If you’re doing this in house, on your own servers, then that’s a vastly different beast than going down an “as a service” approach (like we do with the Queensland State Archives, and others).  We strongly advocate for open source solutions (especially for archives, museums, and other collecting organisations), for various reasons we’ve outlined in places like here and here.

An example digitised item from Queensland State Archives: Item ID: ITM1640266

A key aspect I’d like to highlight of this stage – don’t rush it.  You need the time to implement this into your organisation.  You’re talking about procedural changes, technology introduction, and there is a lot to consider about how it will change your organisation and practices – so be careful and considered about this part. Most of the time it’s better to do digital preservation “right” than “fast”.

And before you know it, the big day is here…

Go Live

Congratulations – you made it to your system going live! Going live is always a mixture of anxiety and excitement; sometimes it’s a big ceremonial bang and sometimes it is just a quiet button pressed on a screen.  

For Digital Preservation, one of the things that’s going to be a bit of an anticlimax is that as soon as you do that first ingest, the files go into quarantine to make sure that virus definitions catch up and we don’t end up digitally preserving viruses (which of course, you might want to do if you run something like The Malware Museum!).

But what about those other two areas on the diagram – skill development and running the system?  A quick couple of final points:

Skill development

Skill development takes time.  

While you should be ergonomically developing the system (making the system meet the needs of the people using it), you also should be training the same people and developing their skills along the same time.  Skill development is something that we feel should start as early as possible, and ideally you should be doing it as you develop the system.

Some of this training is going to be targeted and specific, but a lot of it is going to just be about exposure.  Remember, this is quite a different beast than an Archival Management System, and requires some different skills – so you will need to be aware of this and cognisant of the skills of your team working on the DPS.

We would strongly recommend that you go “live” with an internal version of the system first.  Then you can take the material you have been digitising and start ingesting it through the DPS as the key way to do some skill development. 

Running the system

Once it’s up and running – then the fun starts.  You’ve realised your (electric) dream!

It’s time to tune your machine for maximum performance and flexibility.  To do that, you need to be looking at how the DPS runs – you will be tuning infrastructure, and making sure you have storage available, and a range of other technical tasks.  But you will also be turning into a “format whisperer” – you’ll be looking at what existing and new formats come through the system and determining how to best deal with those for the future as well.  There’s a lot to do here – but there are lots of resources available to help, and people that can support you, like your implementation partners.  You might get to play with a few interesting technologies as well – including Artificial Intelligence, like we’ve been doing lately.

So there’s a run through of what it takes to get cracking on a journey involving Digital Preservation.  If you would like to know more about any aspect of this, then feel free to start a conversation with us on social media –  LinkedIn, X, or Facebook or to drop me a line at piers@gaiaresources.com.au. 

Happy World Preservation Day – may all your bits be in the right order and your formats readily readable into the future!

Piers

The post Digital Preservation: building the Electric Dream together appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Earlier this month Piers Higgs, Sarah Aldrich and I took a trip to Melbourne to attend the Australian Society of Archivists (ASA) 2023 conference at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). With a sense of enthusiasm on the flight over I was keen to get down into the details about archives and solve some challenges with my fellow conference participants.

My trip started Monday at Perth airport grabbing a coffee with Piers before our flight to the great city of Melbourne. Upon arrival in Melbourne we met up with Sarah, one of Gaia Resources’ Collection Analysts based in Canberra, and headed to our hotel located near the MCG. After a social dinner we cracked down on what our plan for ASA 2023 was, who is attending each session and what we wanted to learn. A screenshot of the event agenda can be seen below.

DAY 1:

An early morning run was the start of the day for Sarah, Piers and I decided to keep it a bit more relaxed… We met Sarah for coffees and breakfast at a local cafe then got ready to attend ASA 2023 – Rising to our Challenges. Upon arrival I was amazed to see the variety of archivists from all over Australia and even from Singapore, archivists representing the state archives around Australia but also archivists from local historical societies and schools. Day one had a focus on first nations archives and living history, as well as discussions on the use of AI in archives and the challenge for institutions in archiving big data. 

Day 1 Pre-conference selfie L-R Piers Higgs, Luke Connelly and Sarah Aldrich

Day one went by in a flash, there was a flurry of activities, plenty of notes and a new perspective on the challenges that archives are facing. After wrapping up the day the Gaia Resources fly-in team caught up with some of our Melbourne based team members. An interesting dinner in Federation Square was followed up by some ‘team-building’ at a few bars in the Melbourne CBD. Although Gaia Resources is an online based company it is great to meet co-workers in person and learn more about their lived experiences.

L-R, Sally O’Callaghan (Past Gaia Resources Employee, now working for the NAA), Drew Robinson, Sarah Aldrich, Luke Connelly, Piers Higgs

Day 2:

After a relaxed morning and breakfast, day two of the conference began with a panel discussion from the Queer Archives of Victoria. Then we began our sessions for the day covering digital preservation and digital transformation, with sessions hosted by the National Archives of Australia and the Public Records Office Victoria. It was great to see how archives benefit from technology like the ones developed by Gaia Resources. At the conclusion of the conference we heard from two industry experts, Pia Andrews and Barbara Reed, discussing governance in record keeping and how to personally stand out in archives. The launch of the 2024 ASA Conference wrapped up the final day and Gaia Resources may be heading off to Auckland next year…

Each of us also tried to put together a short summary of our conference highlights, including:

“It’s been 8 years since my first archives conference, and as an IT professional I find that I’m still learning more about how archives undertake their practice – but I’m glad to keep learning from them and trying to make sure we can deliver even better solutions for their problems.”

• Piers Higgs

“Having worked as an archivist prior to pivoting into tech, attending the ASA conference gives me the chance to act like a kid in a candy shop. It’s always a pleasure to connect with archivists, hear about their wins over the past year, talk shop, and discuss how tech can work to their advantage. I enjoy learning and keeping up with the current practices.”

• Sarah Aldrich

“The ASA Conference gave me insight into the challenges that archives are facing and how Gaia Resources can help these organisations grow through custom technological solutions.”

• Luke Connelly

In wrapping up my brief conference breakdown here are some key learnings highlighted by the Gaia Resources team from the 2023 ASA Conference:

1. Archives are essential to preserving our history both personally and on a government level: each record has at least one person attached to it, we must remember the importance of each record and the personal value attributed to it.
2. Conversations around digital preservation and technology such as AI are progressing. 
3. There’s still work to do around bridging the gap between Collecting organisations and technology solution providers. 
4. Gaia’s work and with our clients has demonstrated innovative solutions in the forefront of the field, notably our implementation of the archival management and digital preservation system for QSA and our work on Clio.

If you would like to know more about our digital preservation services and archival storage solutions please don’t hesitate to contact me or start a conversation with us on one of our social media platforms Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook

Luke

The post Rising to the challenge: Recap of the 2023 Australian Society of Archivists Conference appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The ‘Workflow Webinar’ series was hosted by the DPC-led, Community Owned Workflow (COW) group. It is a forum developed out of the need for shared Digital preservation knowledge and workflows amongst practitioners. The COW resources are hosted through the Community-Owned digital Preservation Tool Registry (COPTR) wiki. It is a great online resource and is worth looking through when you have the time. https://coptr.digipres.org/index.php/Workflow:Community_Owned_Workflows 

QSA and Gaia responded together to the request for presenters and we were booked into Episode 3 of the webinar series in March. The aim was to highlight the primary decisions and the tools that were implemented to enable the Archivist workflow. Of key importance was demonstrating how QSA planned to do Digital Preservation at scale – including large ingests, as well as collecting and preserving the large influx of digital material in the pipeline. 

On the day, QSA and Gaia Resources split the twenty-minute time slot, with QSA leading the discussion. They laid out their plan to address legacy records transferred to them on physical media types, which are quickly becoming obsolete (think floppy disks). Gaia Resources followed with an explanation of how and why with our consortium partners, Hudson Molonglo, Record Keeping Innovations, and Artefactual, we built a pre-ingest workflow into ArchivesSpace. The integration of the Digital Preservation System into the existing Archival Management System provides the Archivists with a single point of truth, ArchivesSpace. The pre-ingest workflow in ArchivesSpace authenticates the digital material sent by state agencies, ensuring files have not encountered alteration or bitrot before being imported into the Digital Preservation System. Once the checks are complete, the user clicks the ‘Begin Import’ button, initiating the Digital Preservation workflow. 

Our presentation was well received and nicely expanded on the previous talks in the session. The first session was a great talk by Julia Miller from the PARADISEC Archive. She focused on small archive workflows and talked through the tools that are used at PARADISEC. However, another excellent component of her talk was about the education tools PARADISEC provides for other small archives. Building on Julia’s talk, Andrew Martin from DAMSmart discussed the work that DAMSmart has done with PARADIESEC to digitise and preserve their collection, as well as, provide education around tools and uses. Thus, Episode 3 of the series covered ways that small archives can get started in digital preservation and moved into decisions and considerations when conducting digital preservation activities at scale.

Our team has enjoyed working in digital preservation, collaborating with clients and staying in tune with the wider field. We have participated in continual education opportunities in the digital preservation field and work to gain insight into the processes that others are implementing across the world. Some of our members of the collection team recently attended a DatacomIT webinar ‘Where to Start with Digital Preservation’ in February. It was a high-level session that gave an overview of the fundamentals of implementing digital preservation in various organisations. This session included an introduction from Robin Wright, the Head of the local DPC Australasia and Asia Pacific branch. It is always a good feeling at these events when you fact-check conversations that are had internally and with clients and you know we are headed in the right direction. 

We look forward to exploring future opportunities and expanding our engagements.

Are you interested in digital preservation? Get in touch with us via email or start a conversation with us on one of our social media platforms Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook

Sarah

The post Working on and Speaking to Pre-ingest Digital Preservation Workflows appeared first on Gaia Resources.

That story begins in Brisbane, where I was helping with some workshops with our client, the Queensland State Archives.  Our team are heading into the first milestone for the new Digital Preservation System there, and so we were planning the next stage of the project to deliver the final touches on the system.  After a good collaborative day of workshops, I climbed aboard a flight back to Perth, and found our flight firstly diverted to Kalgoorlie with a fuel issue, and then unable to finish the final leg of the journey due to a maintenance issue.  And so, there we were, 130-odd passengers, trying to find a way to sleep on the Kalgoorlie airport floor.

When we did arrive back in Perth, I realised that there really was no time to rush home to get changed into something more formal for my presentation, and instead headed to the RIMPA event wearing my plane clothes to present on the topic of “Preparing for the Future; Skills and Technologies”.

When I’m asked to present at an event, I like to do my homework into the people that are there and to try to come up with something that is useful for them to take away and use themselves.  I think it’s beholden on a presenter to make sure that their presentation is useful (and bonus if it’s also entertaining, which I do strive for).

In this case, I set up my presentation to look at where we are at today (including an explanation of my attire), where “here” really is, how you assess your baseline in terms of the skills and technologies you have before launching into a crystal ball gazing session about what Records Management professionals might need into the future.  To do this, I introduced them to a model we’ve worked with many times in our environment area; our model we use for assessing the health of an organisation across some key areas; people, process, data, hardware and software.  We started using this model across spatial health check projects, but we find that it works for other industries as well.

This model opens the door for an evaluation of some of the trends that are out there in each of those areas, and I highlighted the following in my talk

• People – it’s about “soft skills”, mental health strategies and resilience 
• Data – looking at the full data lifecycle means you have to consider the volumes being created, the environmental cost of storing all this data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and security considerations, 
• Hardware – it’s about location – is your hardware in the cloud (i.e. someone else’s data centre, or your own on premise approach), 
• Software – thinking about the life cycle of software and the 7-10 year lifespan of software, as well as the increasing opportunities that AI is bringing to the field, and
• Process – it’s about making sure you are developing the best practice processes that work on the digital side, not ones that are just converted from analysis projects.

When you put all this together, you end up creating a plan to evaluate your organisation – one that takes this strategic review as the first step, before moving into process creation, staff development and training, and potentially system implementation for the next generation of system for your organisation. By following that plan you can go on a journey from where you are to somewhere in the future you really want to be (and hopefully you don’t get diverted to Kalgoorlie along the way – but make the most of it if you do!).

It’s important in any organisation considering any sort of approach to really look at where you have come from, and what you have before you embark into the future.  I feel like this is something in particular that I’ve been learning about Gaia Resources over the 20-odd years and multiple evolutions that we have been through, and I hope that it was of use to the RIMPA attendees on the day.

While I can’t promise that I will never turn up to a presentation wearing a Goodies t-shirt in the future, I can promise that I’d be back to another RIMPA event like this in a flash – the audience were very well engaged and it was a real privilege to be there.

Thanks to Jo Kane (L) and Frank Flintoff (M) for the support on the day – and this photo

If you’d like to know more about how these sorts of plans work for organisations, get a copy of the presentation, or just want to follow up on something I’ve said on the day, then drop me a line at piers.higgs@gaiaresources.com.au.  You can also always start a conversation with us on our social media feeds Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, and it’ll get to me that way, too!

Piers

The post A long journey to records management appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Our latest proof-of-concept activity with our valued clients at Queensland State Archives (QSA)  has seen us helping to tap into the information stored in the archives. To do this, we used Clio to transcribe handwritten letters and historical documents that tell the story of the turbulent early contact between Australia’s First Nations people and European settlers in Queensland. 

This work with QSA’s First Nations Access and Engagement Team is part of their Frontier Wars project that includes a significant collection of digitised 150 year old handwritten documents and letters, a community transcription initiative, an exhibition and a three-part SBS documentary series called Australian Wars. The documentary series premiered on Wednesday, 21 September, and it tells the story of Australia’s frontier conflicts that swept the country over a 100-year period.

When David and his team approached us with the challenge of transcribing 250 scanned handwritten letters and documents, we quickly jumped on the opportunity to be involved in such an interesting project. David was considering his options, including:

• Open community transcription, where volunteers manually transcribe documents through FromThePage software,
• Confidential online transcription, where the transcriptions are done manually by a small number of trained and certified professionals, and
• Automated transcription using Gaia Resources Clio prototype.

Using Clio for this project was an attractive option for transcribing sensitive handwritten documents quickly and efficiently; however, the varying cursive styles, condition of documents, formats and orientations of text presented several challenges. The benefit of Clio is that it is very fast to turn handwriting into a text document, so it can be easily scaled to hundreds and thousands of input documents.

The results from Clio can vary between getting just about every word correct with a few typos here and there, to only getting about half the content correct; and there are several factors that control that. As shown in the samples below, there are several variables to contend with, including blurred and crossed-out words, damaged pages, angled writing, newspaper formats and scans of books. Some of these require image pre-processing to get the best possible result.

Examples of the various types and conditions of the Frontier Wars documents

David opted for a combination of automated and open community transcription, and worked with us to take the results from Clio as a starting point for more efficient community transcription in FromThePage software. We all knew that automation alone would not solve the problem, but Clio could help speed up the process. The idea of going forward with that combined approach was that if someone was to start from nothing, it might take them an average of 20 minutes to do a transcription; but with the Clio result as a starting point, they might only take 5-6 minutes to correct errors and move onto the next document.  

What the QSA team found was that the Clio results – although variable – were better than they had expected, and were a great help in saving many hours of manually intensive work. Not only that, but enthusiastic members of the public enjoyed having a look at how the ‘machine’ had interpreted certain bits of text. In some cases, they could raise an eyebrow over something that is quite obvious to the human eye; but the efficiency gain becomes undeniable when scaled to a whole collection of documents. 

Delving into our process and results a little, we were able to use a Clio-derived (e.g. computer) confidence in prediction value to categorise each document’s predicted transcription accuracy. Each term, word or text component in a document is assigned a confidence in prediction value based on how confident Clio is of its transcription for that component. The Average Confidence Level can then be calculated across the entire document.t. 

Below are the Confidence Level categories used and their corresponding average confidence in prediction ranges:

• Very Good (between 90% and 100%)
• Good (between 80% and 89%)
• Above Average (between 70% and 79%)
• Average (between 60% and 69%)
• Poor (between 40% and 59%)
• Very Poor (between 0% and 39%)

Before we started, the QSA team suspected they might only get about 40% of the content accurately transcribed using Clio. The graph shows the percentage of documents that fell into each Confidence Level category.

Predicted Transcription Quality

We had no documents in the Very Poor category. So 100% of documents had an average confidence level exceeding 40%. Although it is only a computer derived measure, it hinted at how well Clio was coping with these historical documents. 

This combination of automated and manual process saves time and enables people to get on with the important stuff that AI can’t do, and it follows that there are consistency and security benefits to go with a more efficient workflow. 

Some other improvements we were able to implement in pre-processing the scanned documents included splitting ‘double page spread’ formats into separate pages. Below is an example of the inputs and outputs before and after splitting the pages:

An example of a double-page spread transcription that was rated as Good

While the statistical results of these may not have changed, the correctness and readability of the output is certainly better and important for the downstream review process. 

As mentioned above, the condition of the original documents varied for a number of reasons. When it comes to documents with multiple orientations of text, Clio will only read one orientation per document n a single page, or it may merge text from adjacent blocks that are meant to be read separately – such as margin text or dates. 

Future improvements could be gained with additional pre-processing by segmenting multiple text orientations, as illustrated below:

An example of multiple text orientations (left) and future approach of isolating blocks of text (right). (for illustration purposes only)

We also could do further post-processing as well as the pre-processing outlined above to improve results.  For example, we could implement a method using the Levenshtein distance algorithm which would assist in finding similar strings in other documents and replace it with a more likely string. In this way we could correct ‘Social socuriy gumber’ to ‘Social Security Number’.

Overall, we were really impressed with the accuracy of the Clio prototype in reading 19th Century handwritten letters and folios. Clio’s models have been well-trained and are very good – not perfect, but very impressive and they are continually improving as more information is passed through it and the corrections are fed back in. Often the model is better at reading old handwriting than I am!

From our point of view, this has been an exciting Proof of Concept as it shows that it is possible and viable to unlock the vast and valuable information stored in archives, making the content more accessible and searchable to the general public. 

If you’ve got data in a soft or hard copy format that you need transcribed, then reach out to us and let’s see how we can help you solve your problems.  In the meantime, if you’d like to know more, start a conversation on our social media platforms – Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook or send us an email.

Gail

The post Harnessing the power of AI to unlock the archives appeared first on Gaia Resources.

One of the things that I find most transcendent about experiencing and engaging with art is its ability to create a connection between viewers and participants. And one of the very reasons why I would like to talk about it, is because it shouldn’t need to be an exclusive right, available only to those whom the luxury is accessible. Some of our team member’s favourite projects are those which provide them with an opportunity to bring their area of passion into the public’s eye, for all to engage with it.

As part of our ongoing involvement with the gallery, I was recently able to attend a panel discussion and exhibition held at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), in Stanley place. The panel topic was ‘A New Frontier for AI and the Arts’, which, given my interest in technology and the Arts, was an amazing opportunity. I also had the chance to view the current Exhibition ‘Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles’ in the evening light, and was blown away at both the technical challenge in such a complex exhibition and the intense and overwhelming experience that was the installation in the very first room.

The panel itself was chaired by QAGOMA Digital Transformation Manager Morgan Strong, and featured Professor Marek Kowalkiewicz (QUT Chair in Digital Economy); Thomas Stenning (Product Owner for Machine Learning at SplashHQ); and Larene Le Gassick (Independent Software Engineer and Accessibility Consultant). The panellists all brought together different perspectives and considerations for the discussions on ‘merging of AI with cultural practice’.

Panellists at QAGOMA’s ‘A New Frontier for AI and the Arts’ discussion.

Discussions touched on a range of areas in the brief time available, including the question of if we consider the outputs of AI art generators such as DALL-E 2 to be truly creative in their own right? And if so, is the artist the person providing the prompt for creation, or does it include the writers of the algorithms behind the system? Perhaps AI will be considered as instead another tool that allows artists to visualise, discover and explore across mediums and domains without requiring the years of practise to develop each of the associated technical skills. If that is the case, does that allow a new type of artist to find their place? Technology is one tool that can bring years of training and education and instead provide a more accessible outlet for creative thought that can be shared and used by a new type of artist. Bringing access to existing cultural assets is one thing, providing both that and the resources to allow those who may typically struggle to create art using traditional methods is another. Whether it be marginalised groups to whom the years of typically unpaid labour perfecting a specific technique may be a barrier, or someone to whom the application of physical brush to canvas is a challenge, technology provides new means to create and engage with art.

While each panellist had their own perspective, the discussion provided insights into the potential (and potential challenges) that may be found through the use of AI in the Arts.

The panel was followed by a short presentation from QAGOMA’s Digital Resident, Kate Thompson (Associate Professor of Digital Pedagogies, QUT), presenting some highlights from her recent research into the utilisation of technology by audiences at the Gallery. It was fascinating to see how that gallery is using technology to allow visitors more varied and informed engagement with exhibitions.

Collections online allows for high quality digital images, with functionality from a simple zoom to sliders displaying the before and after images from restorations.

It was marvellous to hear about further work being done at QAGOMA as part of their Digital Transformation program. We wrote late last year about our work on rebuilding their Collections Online platform. Since then monthly traffic to the site has increased fivefold. Given our passion for bringing the assets of our institutions into the public eye, this is an amazing motivation for us to continue this work. 

If you’re interested in how your organisation’s content can be brought to the public, please get in touch via email or get in touch on our socials: Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn

Sophie

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Many of our blogs on open source software focus on spatial tools and the hard sciences. What we haven’t delved into recently is the importance of open source software in the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). Ten years ago, Piers wrote a blog about open source collection management and it’s time for an update. Today we will focus on the growth of these solutions, our continuing support of them (and of that sector), and the open source projects we’ve been putting in place recently in GLAM organisations. 

First, to recap, open source software means that the source code is published freely – anyone can download a copy of the code, use it, and customise it. There is also the benefit of reduced ongoing costs – rather than continuing to pay annual licensing fees, open source software installations require only hosting, and upgrades to the code. In addition to financial sustainability, open source software provides technical sustainability. Because the code is freely available, it means that the community of users can contribute bug fixes and improvements in an ongoing fashion. Realising that many GLAM organisations don’t have specialised IT departments, implementation of the software and upgrades is where Gaia Resources can assist, and we have various levels of support that can be tailored to an institution’s needs. 

Open source software also supports the evidential value and provenance of your records – the source code is freely available and can be audited to ensure that your data is not being changed or manipulated by the system. Open source software provides a level of transparency for institutions that need to be able to attest that their collections are untampered with. 

When working with a collecting organisation, we usually recommend one of three open source tools; Access to Memory (AtoM), CollectiveAccess, or ArchivesSpace. The solutions we provide can be out of the box – that is, it is installed as “vanilla versions” without customisation – or in some cases, they can be heavily customised such as with our Queensland State Archives implementation of ArchivesSpace. We have particular experience in implementing the Australian Series System for archives in all of these software packages. 

Access to Memory is an open source tool that is developed and maintained by Artefactual (one of our partners in the current Digital Preservation project for Queensland State Archives). Artefactual also develops and maintains Archivematica – a tool for Digital Preservation. AtoM, as it is known colloquially, is a great tool for small to medium size archives. It provides not only an easy to use interface for staff, but offers an immediate web presence that allows public access to search the collections. For many of our customers, we have implemented add-ons or plugins to provide customised functionality, ranging from subscriber-only access to digital materials to online ordering. 

CollectiveAccess is another popular open source collection management tool. Its flexibility is a key benefit of the software, and it can be implemented to manage collections of museum objects (including all SPECTRUM functions), archival records, and digital materials. We have implemented CollectiveAccess for several clients from across the GLAM sector, from archives to high-end art collections, and even not for profits managing their own historical collections. Whirl-i-gig, out of the United States, maintains the source code for CollectiveAccess, and our own Gaia Resources developers have contributed bug fixes and added new features to the source code as we make improvements for our clients. 

ArchivesSpace is the tool that we have implemented at the greatest scale. Queensland State Archives uses a highly customised version of ArchivesSpace to manage their 64 kilometres of government records. While ArchivesSpace does come with a public interface, our work with QSA included a custom-built public interface, ArchivesSearch, and we have also implemented these systems for clients in Tasmania. Lyrasis, again in the United States, maintains ArchivesSpace core code.      

With our experience over the last fifteen years, we understand the needs of collecting organisations and can recommend solutions that fit the needs and scale of the client. We stand by our passion for open source software solutions and advocate for them as the most sustainable solution for collecting institutions. Whether your organisation is small and volunteer-run or you have kilometres of records, one of the above systems can be implemented in a way to suit your needs. 

Think we can help assess or even customise the best tool for your organisation? Get in touch with us via email or start a conversation with us on one of our social media platforms – Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Sarah

The post Open Source Solutions in the Museum and Archive Worlds appeared first on Gaia Resources.

We were asked to present on the work that we do in the archival collections around Australia, so we gave a quick run through of a range of projects that we’re working on around Australia, and talked about some common and different functionality. We then talked through some of the technology and future things that might be of interest to archives we’ve been looking at. 

The talk was given in person (with a COVID safe setup) and also on Zoom – and the Zoom call was recorded as has been made available below.

https://vimeo.com/ausarchivists/review/686909468/047a43727d

It was nice to see a few of our clients and some new faces as well.  One thing that I really like about the way the ASA operates is that it welcomes in new organisations that are seeking to learn about archiving, and some of the people we met that night asked a whole bunch of interesting questions in the session and afterwards around the technology side of archiving.

Over the years, the ASA has facilitated ways for us to learn a lot as a team about archives, and it was good to be giving something back to them and their members!  If you have questions about archives, then feel free to get in touch and ask either Meg or myself questions via our enquiries@gaiaresources.com.au email address – or start a conversation with us on our social media via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers

The post Archives now and forever! appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Item ID: ITM1640266

Gaia Resources is a proponent of open-source solutions for cultural institutions, particularly for long-term sustainable information management. Without restrictive licensing conditions, you know that the underlying code of a system can be visible to you and within your control in the future. If a specific vendor is no longer available, the code itself can still be taken up by others without risking a loss of access to your digital assets.

In 2020, Gaia Resources along with our consortium partners Hudson Molonglo and Recordkeeping Innovation, built and implemented a new Archival Management System (AMS) using a customised version of the open-source software platform ArchivesSpace, as well as a portal for Agencies (ArchivesGateway) and a new public interface for searching the archives (ArchivesSearch). This project was delivered to the Queensland State Archives (QSA) with the support and assistance of the Digital Archiving Program (DAP).

Following the successful delivery of this trio of systems, the next important task in the digital transformation of Queensland’s archives was digital preservation. To ensure the successful delivery of a comprehensive digital preservation solution, our next step at Gaia Resources was the validation of key questions and assumptions via delivery of a Proof of Concept (PoC) to QSA.

One of the original implementation team project managers, Megan Edward, began working on the PoC for a new process to integrate the transfer of digital records from agencies with a digital preservation system. The groundwork of the PoC demonstrated that our combined Waterfall/Agile methodology could both deliver to the requirements set while allowing for a feedback loop during implementation stages which gives QSA the flexibility to make smaller decisions once the initial system is up and running in a test environment.

With our original consortium partners, Hudson Molonglo and Recordkeeping Innovation, in the POC, we were able to design, develop and implement an end-to-end digital transfer process. The workflow was built upon functionality delivered in the AMS and was subsequently integrated with Archivematica for long-term digital preservation. This allowed us to validate assumptions made before implementation, and identify areas requiring further investigation for a complete solution.

At Gaia Resources, we prefer to work closely and collaboratively with our clients; as well as call on the expertise of subject matter experts when required to ensure we can provide the best service and solution. In the current DPS project, we have also partnered with Artefactual. Artefactual is not only responsible for maintaining Archivematica but they also manage Access to Memory (AtoM), another open-source archival solution that Gaia Resources has delivered for clients. With this team of specialists, the project will implement digital preservation capabilities for QSA, enabling them to preserve and provide access to born-digital and digitised records of cultural and historical significance for Queensland. We are privileged to be part of this important work preserving Queensland’s heritage, delivered for QSA via DAP as part of the technology transformation program underway at QSA. It is wonderful to continue our partnership with Record Keeping Innovation and Hudson Molonglo and to welcome Artefactual to the team. 

The Queensland State Archive holds over 67 linear kilometres of records

More recently, I wrote about how lucky the Brisbane-based QSA team were in getting a tour around some of the amazing facilities there as we came closer to the next phase of our digital preservation work with QSA and DAP. Our continuing relationship with QSA themselves; our partners from the original consortium; and now Artefactual, brings together specialist knowledge in record-keeping best practice as well as the two open-source solutions underlying the future and current systems.

As our relationship with QSA continues, Gaia Resources is excited to see the outcomes of this stage of work and bring it into use for the benefit of future generations. 

If you are interested in discussing how Gaia Resources might assist your organisation in managing archives or collections solutions, please get in touch via email or our socials: Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sophie

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QAGOMA’s Collections Online allows users to search specifically for items relating to Brisbane

The QAGOMA Collections Online website displays their digitised content from within the collection for the public. When our project with them began, they had an existing prototype that provided guidance for the desired outcomes. However, it didn’t necessarily provide the intended functionality and would not allow QAGOMA to reliably maintain and extend the solution. The prototype was also limited in that it was not able to automatically migrate changes from within QAGOMA to ensure that the Collections Online site was kept up to date without requiring manual intervention.

The Gaia Resources software engineering team include some individuals with extensive experience in delivering solutions utilising the Drupal content management platform, and so it was a relatively simple task for us to be able to deliver this based on the existing prototype. Our focus was to leverage Drupal’s framework and utilise best practice in the theming layer to deliver a Collections Online that effectively managed content delivery for the QAGOMA staff. One of the key outcomes we wanted to make sure of was that the site was as maintainable and extensible for QAGOMA into the future as possible.

Collections online allows for high quality digital images, with functionality from a simple zoom to sliders displaying the before and after images from restorations.

This project was not only an exceptional opportunity to deliver on our goals to bring collections online, but for the team it was an opportunity to work directly with a client in a collaboration to bring their prototype solution into its next phase. We have had the pleasure of working previously with the QAGOMA Digital Transformation Manager, Morgan Strong, and knew that this pre-existing relationship would make for a solid partnership. While it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with him again, it also gave us the unique opportunity to know how to work best together and to utilise the skills and expertise of both Gaia Resources and the team at QAGOMA. This meant that we knew we had both the resources to deliver what was required, but also could provide a light project management touch (in other words, they barely needed me).

Collections Online allows the public to access art both new and familiar.

To keep work as streamlined as possible, the core team was our Senior Software Engineer, Brianna Williams and Morgan Strong of QAGOMA. However, we did have a ‘supporting cast’ to ensure we could be flexible with our resourcing and provide thorough review processes. Our developers and QAGOMA utilised Pantheon as the hosting platform, taking advantage of their Multidev environments to allow QAGOMA and Gaia Resources staff to work in tandem effectively. This allowed us to quickly share updates and provide our combined team with ready visibility of progress, as well as providing a simple solution for the final deployment. Primarily, we wanted a platform that allowed for a simple and flexible way for our teams to work together on Collections Online and to deliver it to the public at the end of the project with price and quality in mind.

QAGOMA Collections online was delivered on time and with positive feedback from both the Gaia Resources team and QAGOMA staff. If you’re interested in how your organisation’s content can be brought to the public, please get in touch via email or get in touch on our socials: Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sophie

The post QAGOMA: Collections Online appeared first on Gaia Resources.

First up was our work on Retromaps, which recently won the Spatial Enablement category of the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards for Western Australia. 

This project started a very long time ago when we started thinking about what to do with maps in Archives around Australia.  We had been working with the State Records Office of Western Australia (SROWA) on implementing a new Archival Management System for their use (based on the open source Access To Memory platform), and so we picked up some publicly available maps and in December 2015, we georeferenced a few, and did a basic web map (located here).  Then, in 2016, Damien Hassan from SROWA came to one of our QGIS training courses, and we talked about how to digitise those maps (again, here).  Damien worked on the digitisation of those 2,202 plans over the course of the next few years, and Retromaps was born from that massive effort.  Next thing I know, Damian Shepherd and I are standing in front of a room full of spatial people accepting an award for the project on behalf of our teams that worked so hard on this project.

About a week later, we were invited by the team at South Coast NRM to watch the 2021 Australian BioSecurity Awards, where there was particular mention of the Project Dieback project – which we have assisted with the development of the Dieback Information Delivery and Management System (DIDMS), which was again contributed to by a large group of people over the years.  Their acceptance speech was a good one to see:

There’s nothing better than hearing that our clients have won awards for work that we’ve done with them, as it really does make us feel like we’ve done a good job.  Some, like Retromaps, end up being years in the making, but that’s still a great reminder of what we’ve delivered.

Really – what we want to say is “thank you” to our clients for choosing us to work with them, and hopefully we can help our future clients win more awards!

If you would like to know more about how Gaia Resources can help you, then feel free to get in touch via email, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers

P.S. For those not in Australia – the title “Straight to the pool room” is a great line from an Australian film called “The Castle”, meaning that it’s worthy of being treasured!

The post Straight to the pool room appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Gaia Resources first began working with the Queensland State Archives (QSA) in 2017. Our relationship started when we collaborated to launch the collection sharing site Q-Album (see the blog post about our involvement here). We were then engaged to implement and support their new Archival Management System (see blog post here). Currently, we are working with QSA on a new Digital Preservation System.

Few people realise the treasures tucked away for safekeeping in archives around the world, be they personal, community, or government records. In the case of QSA, they are the permanent repository for records owned and created by the Queensland state and local governments. Any item deemed to be of enduring value to documenting the operation and history of the State of Queensland finds its permanent home at QSA and is protected and carefully stored for perpetuity. Special precautions are taken to maintain a physical record’s longevity, including but not limited to temperature, humidity, and handling procedures. As hinted at previously, once the Digital Preservation System is in place, QSA will also collect digital records. QSA also generates digital facsimiles of their most popular and/or at-risk items. As with physical documents, digital items require steps to ensure they are accessible for generations to come (read about Digital Preservation here). To date, the archival material in QSA’s holdings date from as early as the 1820s and stretch over 67 linear kilometres.

The Queensland State Archive holds over 67 linear kilometres of records

On a recent site visit, QSA Archivist Elizabeth Hawkins kindly toured a handful of Brisbane staff through a few of their repositories. The objective was to introduce new Gaia Resources staff to the purpose and procedures of the archives, subsequently providing context for the tools we build and support for QSA. 

While we work on QSA’s Archival Management System, we rarely have time to look at the records that it catalogues. One favourite item that Elizabeth pulled for us was one of the Brisbane prison ledgers. These logs hold the personal and physical details of each prisoner and a rap sheet of all their crimes. Of particular interest were the photos, in remarkably good condition, taken using a mirror so that individuals’ faces and profiles were captured in a single shot, saving precious film. A record like this can illuminate what acts were considered criminal in the contemporary period. While many larceny and assault charges resulted in incarceration, one surprising penalty was several months in prison for “supplying liquor to a South Sea Islander” (Queensland State Archives, Item Representation ID PR654070).

Elizabeth then took us through the repository of maps and oversized paper items. This room is wall to wall flatbed filing cabinets (and is not included in their count of 67 linear km of records). She opened a drawer to show us one particular item. We were looking at a map of Northern Australia from the 1940s. Upon closer examination, all the notations, place names etc, were in a Japanese script. From here, it’s easy to jump to conclusions, but none of that is documented. Instead, what we do know is these maps were found amongst a group of records from a Queensland government agency. How the maps came into the possession of the agency we may never know.

Upon entering QSA, key items of historical relevance to Queensland are displayed

Elizabeth included the Conservation Lab on our tour. Kristy McCullough, QSA’s Conservator, generously took the time to demystify the work of a Conservator. She took us through the process of assessing, planning, and actioning a conservation strategy for a book that had been a tasty meal for some determined insects. It had come to QSA in such poor condition that its pages were in countless pieces and the text was virtually illegible. According to Kristy the best course of action for such an item is to piece together the pages and take a high-resolution photograph of each page. The digital record then becomes the point of truth. Kristy explained that a choice must be made about the time and resources poured into the one object balanced with the value gained and the backlog of other conservation needs. Kristy further educated us about the differences between preservation and conservation, two often confused concepts. Preservation activities mitigate risks to items and include tasks like maintaining a stable environment with appropriate climate control, monitoring an item’s condition, and ensuring proper handling. On the other hand, conservation is an act of intervention on the objects’ condition.  It might include piecing together tears (with special inert materials), adding support, or chemical cleanings to eliminate hazards.

Sally Mitchell and Sarah Aldrich use the Historical Image Library Discovery Assistant (HILDA) to learn more about the history of Queensland

Throughout the tour, there was one factor that remained a highlight for our team; seeing the system we implemented and customised in use for each role. We watched the Reading Room team process requests from the public. Being able to observe their process illuminated how they use the tool and why some enhancements were monumental in improving their workflow. In the Conservation Lab, we saw how an item was updated, the condition reported, proposed treatments lodged, and then the circle closed as an item is returned to the repository. 

We only saw a minuscule portion of the collection, but it is evident that the records within QSA tell a web of stories. The narratives range from the personal which bring families together or they may pertain to Queensland’s role in global events. Also evident is that the work of an archive is never finished. We at Gaia Resources are privileged to be able to support the great work done by QSA to protect our history. Thank you to Queensland State Archives and especially Elizabeth for taking the time to walk us through a portion of their 60 odd kilometres of records. It truly elucidates the importance of preserving records and the role of archives.

If you’re responsible for collections, get in touch to learn how we can help connect people to your treasures. Reach out via email or get in touch on our socials: Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sophie

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