We have had a lot of learning to do as a bunch of technologists working in a specialised area like archives.  We’ve invested a lot of time in training our teams in how to “do” archives – from behind the scenes tours of archives that just give you so much context for everything you see on a screen, to attending professional development events.  And of course – our team themselves consist of people who not only deliver technology solutions – but also that have worked as archivists and collections managers themselves.  This means that we have developed a lot of the subject matter expertise that is absolutely necessary to delivering a good solution (I’m particularly grateful for having some wonderful people who have helped me – clients and colleagues – and my ongoing membership of the Australian Society of Archivists as well).

The Queensland State Archive holds over 67 linear kilometres of records

Open source technologies are a wonderful opportunity for archives -both in terms of costs, and in terms of transparency and accountability –  and it’s something that over 20 years we have built Gaia Resources upon.  This has included originally using open source spatial software like QGIS (which we still deliver training courses in to this day) right through to delivering archival management systems based on software like AtoM, Archivematica and ArchivesSpace.  Unfortunately we do still find ourselves busting myths around open source, and explaining how we support it with enterprise level agreements and the like, but thankfully that’s becoming more and more rare these days.

Open technologies, like open source software, can deliver really excellent outcomes for archives and other collecting institutions.  These technologies can provide transparency in many ways, and we also strive to do that in our project delivery; down to giving our clients a lot of visibility into the “under the hood” ways in which these things work.  It is challenging, but across our work with so many organisations, this has helped us to develop a strong relationship based on trust and openness that has really helped us to deliver across some challenging situations.  So you can see that this open-ness is right through our projects, from the tech stack up right to how we manage our relationships with our clients, and that’s an important thing for me personally.  While we say that we support open software and open data, it’s the “open” bit that’s the most important.

Our work with the Queensland State Archives, using open source software continues to this day

It’s fitting that this year’s Australian Society of Archivists conference is themed “opening the archive” and we’ll hopefully be presenting some of our experiences and ideas in Christchurch in October.  We are also just working on some other archive related initiatives around openness and technologies, and we’ll talk more about these in the coming months leading up to the conference.

In the meantime, if you want to know more, then feel free to drop me a line or start a conversation with us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram!

Piers

The post Opening Archives appeared first on Gaia Resources.

This year, you’re going to see a fair bit from us recapping what we’ve done to get to where we are over the last 20 years, and we thought we’d start this off in January with a bit of a look back to the start of things.

Back in 2004, I had left working in a biodiversity survey company to finish my Masters in Business Administration, and then started the current iteration of Gaia Resources (technically, I used the name back in 1997 and 1998 when I was doing some short term contracts for various organisations).

Gaia Resources started from my home – technically, from a small table in a side area off our lounge room – and look how we’ve come full circle – now, post COVID, we are mainly working from home these days once more.  

The story of Gaia Resources – right back from that table – is one that I look back and think about regularly – seeing some of the challenges we’ve faced and overcome really does help you to have the strength to take on new challenges and to solve other problems that arise.  So I thought I’d just write a little about the areas we’ve worked in over the twenty years as a starting point, and how far we’ve come.

When I started the company we were providing a range of spatial data services to the biological survey part of the environmental industry.  We were busy digitising the maps and tables from a range of different biological survey reports, creating digital datasets from paper sources.  Oh, how far we’ve come since then – like the projects we’ve done like using Artificial Intelligence to capture biodiversity data (such as our work with the Northern Territory).  One constant though – it has also been important to interacting with biodiversity data standards when doing this data collection (like the TDWG standards and the new Australian Biodiversity Information Standard), as we have done that throughout our history.

This pic was from The Stagg cafe in Hobart during the TDWG 2023 conference

In 2005 we saw the arrival of Google Maps, and that started to change the landscape of spatial data quite quickly – all of a sudden it was much more desirable to present spatial data through the browser.  Google Maps started to get traction over the next few years and we realised that digitising and producing paper maps was on the way out, so we started to hire software engineers into the company to build systems to manage spatial data.  To this day we are continuing to develop these biological data systems, such as our work on the Western Australian Biodiversity Information Office (both design and build) and the federal government’s Biodiversity Data Repository.

During those early days, we also found ourselves working with the Western Australian Museum, where we were supporting their collections databases – registers of all the vouchered specimens that they have in their collections.  This led to a chance meeting and discussion around Archives, and then we were providing services to a whole new sector, which has become one of the areas I’m very proud of.  

We have delivered a range of open source collections databases to the Archives sector in Australia, across Western Australia, Victoria and most notably Queensland, where – on the back of our work with the Queensland State Archives – we set up our second office in Brisbane.  All of a sudden, we were an Australian company – not just a Western Australian one.  So, from our origins around that little table, now we have offices and staff right around Australia – that’s been a big change!

As an aside – the Archives bug had bitten me in particular, and how!  Being at the most recent national Archives conference in Melbourne just reaffirmed how important this sector is – and how much we enjoy being part of it.  Going from our simple first steps of implementing collections databases to now implementing complete archival systems, including comprehensive digital preservation systems – all of this has been a big shift from our origins, but in the right direction!

Luke, Sarah and I went to the ASA conference in Melbourne in 2023 – our sixth one. Dennis Lillee was there already

The Environment and Collections areas have become pillars of what we do at Gaia Resources; there are other areas we also work in, but these two have come to be our mainstays.  We’ve even now designed the company to have these as our “units” – so that we are focused on our clients in these areas, and delivering high quality services to them.

There are a lot of people that have helped Gaia Resources get to the 20 year mark; clients, colleagues, friends and family.  But throughout the whole thing we could not have done what we have, as well as we have, without our team – our staff, our family away from home.  These people – past and present – have all contributed in some way to the organisation and without them we would not be here.  So to talk about the history of Gaia Resources without the people that came on the journey – so thank you to everyone who has, still does, (or will) work here at Gaia Resources – the place wouldn’t be what it is without your input along the way.  Thank you.

The team at team week in 2022 in Perth – one of the fondest memories from the last couple of years (which will be repeated this year – hopefully without COVID!)

I’m forever grateful to lead this team on our mission of making the world a better place, through the delivery of sustainable technology solutions in a responsible manner.  This year is going to be one where we get to celebrate that just a little bit, and that’s going to make for some fun times ahead.

Stay tuned for more about our history over the year, and for some bright new initiatives that we’re heading into.  Meanwhile, if you want to know more about us, why not drop me a line on email, or through our social media channels – Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter and now Instagram!

Piers

The post Twenty Years appeared first on Gaia Resources.

One of the more common highlights that have been raised by the team is our company culture and values.  We’ve worked really hard since COVID to create a sustainable remote working environment, and this has been a success primarily due to a lot of passion from our team to make things better, especially from our Cultural Champions.  At our final company meeting there were many references to our values and culture that were around “living up to our values”, “looking after each other” and the one that made me the most proud – “not just doing lip service to this stuff”.  This is the softer side of business and it means that we have a really engaged team that pulls together to work through the problems that arise – it’s great to have the team having each other’s back.  We’ve got through some massive challenges this year because of our team pulling together to solve them.

Pet bingo was one of the more fun activities we did this year remotely – if you saw a pet in the video meetings then you got to cross one off!

Another common theme was the benefits of the work we’ve done in the management side of things – with our now expanded management team of myself, Andrew (now our Finance Manager), Justine (our People and Culture Manager) and Tanya (our Operations Manager) really starting to hit our stride as the year has gone on.  Having Tanya and Justine join Andrew and I has brought a breath of fresh air and really revitalised us – and the team are seeing that benefit as we are moving forward with a range of initiatives and are generally making the company really hum.

The other thing that has been pointed out by a lot of the team are the rest of the team.  Our meeting had a fair few “thanks” to others in the team from people that felt particularly supported, and that was often reciprocal across the team.  We’ve brought on 15 new staff this year as others have moved on, and there was a lot of praise for the way that people have been brought into the company and supported, and a common note that there was a lot of generosity and support from the whole team.  This again links back to our core values, but the Gaia way is to look after each other, so that’s definitely bedded into the company.

There are a lot of projects we’ve been working on this year, and a number of them were raised as highlights in our meeting from the team, including some of our larger projects:

• The Queensland State Archives project, where this year we’ve developed and gone live with an internal Digital Preservation System capacity, which will roll out in the new year to the agencies in Queensland, 
• The Biodiversity Data Repository (BDR) project, where we have delivered a data ingestions pipeline that takes incidental occurrence and systematic survey data into the BDR and through some very detailed operations, transforms it into the Australian Biodiversity Information Standard ready for use in a graph database, and
• Our work with the Biodiversity Information Office, where we have undertaken an extension project delivering more functionality this year for the Dandjoo system.

A range of other projects and initiatives were mentioned by people as well – trips to see clients and work collaboratively with them, or trips to the conferences that we attend (like the Australian Society of Archivists 2023 and TDWG 2023 conferences).

Luke, Sarah and Piers at the ASA 2023 conference

Above all, though, this year was all it was about the people we work with.  As someone commented in the meeting, this year has felt like five years rather than one – but every time we yelled into the void, the void yelled back with a great deal of support.  This is exactly the type of company I wanted to build when I started Gaia Resources and it seems like it’s really working well.

Our company meeting was a good way to review the year and celebrate our successes as we head into our 20th year of operation.  There’s going to be some interesting challenges along the way, but we’ve got each other’s back and we’re ready to get stuck in after a nice break over the holiday season.

We’ll see you in 2024!

Piers

The post Wrapping Up 2023 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

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.

While Business Analysts are still an integral part of our teams, the IT field has changed since 2021. In line with Heraclitus’ words, “the only constant in life is change,” our world is ever evolving and tools such as Artificial Intelligence, or AI, are ever present in all areas of life. As a Business Analyst, this raises questions about how AI will change our work and impact the future of the BA role. What does the uptake and evolution of AI mean for a Business Analyst in 2023? What are the opportunities? Where are the efficiencies? What is the role of the human?

Business analysis does not occur in a vacuum. It is critical to understand and leverage relevant information at the right time. This can be a challenge given the volume of information available but the limited time frame available to gather and digest this information. Harnessing the tools at hand allows more time and energy for critical thinking, problem solving, mastery of business nuances and space for further specialisation.

It is here where the considered use of AI can prove beneficial. Employing AI in its various guises can condense and curate information at a speed that is unlikely to be matched by human analysis. If AI is considered another tool in the BA skillset, it can reduce time spent on manual tasks such as reviewing data to identify trends. 

That said, for AI to be impactful and most beneficial, it needs to be introduced at the appropriate time in the analysis process with methods to validate and cross-reference the outcomes. An understanding of what AI tools are appropriate for the task at hand is becoming essential knowledge for BAs. Further to the available tools, BAs will require the skill of effectively using the AI tools to generate desired outcomes. The job of a BA does not stop there; any output will require a close review to ensure accuracy, quality and consistency. 

Much of the above thinking is geared towards how AI can be used by a BA for the job at hand. However, we acknowledge this is only a small subset of AI. At the risk of stating the obvious, AI is an expanding field in its own right, and its uses and adaptation will grow in leaps and bounds. While change is a constant, we have a suspicion that AI and its uses will soon become a constant, too. At Gaia Resources, we are looking forward and thinking about these changes. We’re doing the review and the analysis. We are weighing the opportunities, identifying the risks and planning for a future where our Business Analysts can consider and incorporate AI to maximise their impact. We are excited for what’s next. 

If you want to know more about Business Analysts at Gaia Resources and how they can contribute to the success of your technical solutions, feel free to get in touch! Or start a conversation with us on Facebook, X or LinkedIn.

Sarah & Natalie 

The post 2023 Global Business Analysis Day: Business Analysis in the age of AI appeared first on Gaia Resources.

TDWG (“tadweeg”) is a great acronym and best explained from their own web site (www.tdwg.org):

Historically known as the Taxonomic Databases Working Group, today’s Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) is a not-for-profit, scientific and educational association formed to establish international collaboration among the creators, managers and users of biodiversity information and to promote the wider and more effective dissemination and sharing of knowledge about the world’s heritage of biological organisms.

Unlike what the local cafes thought (hats off to The Stagg for this one) , it’s not a taxidermy or really even a taxonomy conference: it’s about biodiversity data and standards around that data – and it attracts people from all over the world.

What I found really amazing was not only the efforts that the organisers put into making sure the hybrid conference worked for both in-person attendees and those attending virtually, but the range of interesting and thought provoking papers that were presented.

It’s always hard to come up with a summary of a conference that goes for a week and involves a lot of thought provoking stuff – I mean, I’ve got about twenty pages of notes to work through – but Mieke and I are giving it a go for our team, so here’s the recap of that recap!

Firstly and we’ve got to claim our own stuff as a highlight – but both Mieke and I gave talks this year.  Mieke was talking about translating between the Darwin Core data standard and the Australian Biodiversity Information Standard, and this is a key part of the work we’re doing helping the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water deliver the Biodiversity Data Repository.  Meanwhile I was presenting on the work we’ve done on the Restricted Access Species Data (RASD) Service with the Atlas of Living Australia. Note: we’ll update this blog in the future with the recordings when they become available.

The themes that we saw at the conference that really stuck with us included:

• Data quality – a bunch of talks about data quality made us really agree that what defines quality is case dependent on the end user needs.  Having some “fitness for purpose” flags (e.g. suitable for modelling) that can be associated with them – this is far more nuanced than the usual “good quality” tags.
• Integration – there were talks on a range of systems like taxonomic backbones, data repositories and other systems – there are a lot of opportunities to synthesize and aggregate data, as well as connect to some significant infrastructure services that can really help with standardisation and connectivity between data sources.
• Terms of useMore and more fields – with the RASD workshop, we also saw some great talks about both the FAIR and CARE principles that really have given us food for thought.  These principles – RASD, FAIR and CARE – all provide frameworks for how to format data so that there are appropriate levels of access depending on the content and context.  Adding in some additional fields not only to the data stores that we work with, but also the data exchange methods we use, will certainly add a lot to the accessibility and meaningfulness that’s out there in biodiversity data space.
• Artificial Intelligence is out there and being used – we already knew this, but it was great to see a wide range of pragmatic and useful ways in which AI can assist in the efforts across the biodiversity community to solve some big challenges – digitisation, transcription, data processing, identification and data indexing just to name a few!  

One of the big things we did differently this year was to help out and support the first ever TDWG Student Prize.  This is a really important thing to do – supporting our students is the way to make sure that we’ll have a thriving and active community moving forward.  So it’s really important to support our students, and congratulations to Michael Elliott for taking the prize home, and for all the students who were part of the conference.  

Any conference is not without a lot of side-bar (or maybe front-bar) talks and Hobart put on a great show for us.  We were able to get out and try a bunch of different places with colleagues and friends – we can definitely recommend the Blood Orange Stout from Custom’s House.  Hobart is a great place to visit (I’ve been there a few times now) and will be back again in the future as well.

So finally, a big thanks to all the people that made it happen, both in person and virtually.  TDWG is pretty unique – it’s a conference that ticks two of my great loves of technology and biodiversity – and I’m really hoping it won’t be another 15 years before I get to another one!  If you want to know more about any of the topics touched on in this blog then drop me a line, or start a conversation with us on social media Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook!

Piers

The post TDWG 2023 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.

I am just approaching the end of my third month at Gaia Resources and I feel like I have been here a lot longer than that. Starting in May, Gaia Resources welcomed me with open arms into the role of Business Development Coordinator. My role has me working closely with Piers Higgs, the Gaia Resources CEO. Piers from day one made it abundantly clear what my role was and how we would work together. He cleared his schedule for my first days to assist in situating myself at Gaia Resources. Each morning in the office we would take a walk down to the local café and I would be given the opportunity to ask any questions as needed. This initial first week ensured that I knew what was expected of me and how I could best spend my time.

Team Lunch at Samuels on Mill – would recommend the Steak Sandwich

Gaia Resources is a company with offices all over Australia and staff dotted around the major cities and this results in online communication becoming the new normal. Coming from an industry where face to face is the norm this was a change, it developed my communication skills and taught me that you have to be patient and succinct in getting your key points across. You may think that working in this virtual world would induce a sense of aloneness but Gaia Resources has successfully combated this through multiple activities. 

To start, the daily coffee catch-ups. When you are working in an office, many parts of your day are engaged in small talk and informal conversations between co-workers whereas working in a virtual office is where this becomes a challenge. The team at Gaia Resources has dedicated daily times daily for coffee catch-ups, and they are open to anyone and the start times vary to cater to the offices around Australia. The best part of these calls is getting a glimpse into other people’s lives, their pets and their hobbies, it is always a great way to spend some time between client meetings.

Waiting for the Culture Coffee Catch-up whilst working from home

Secondly, I have noticed at Gaia Resources how passionate the team is about their work and their hobbies. There is nothing better than having a company and it’s employees who have values that align with your own. I have noticed in my first months that the team always put a focus on ‘is this the right thing to do?’ both from a business and environmental perspective. It’s nice to see and helps to push me to do the best thing in my daily tasks.

Last but not least, Gaia Resources has good vibes (I’m gen Z, so this is my standard vernacular). What I mean by this is the Gaia Resources team is encouraged to grow and learn everyday or as much as they would like and if there is something that will help us in our role we are encouraged to go for it and enhance our skills. Everyone in the company is also only a message away, so if I can’t figure out the difference between Drupal and WordPress it’s only a few minutes before I have a full explanation. Moving forward with Gaia I am excited to expand my knowledge and learn more about each person in the company.

Starting this role at Gaia Resources has pushed me to learn new things, develop my online communication skills and refine my gif and meme crafting. Without the strong foundation I received in my early months and the support of my colleagues from coast to coast, I would not have the same level of confidence in my position that I currently do.

I have included some tips that I have gleaned from my time at Gaia Resources so far:

If you are looking for a company that will support you and provide you with the necessary tools to further your career please don’t hesitate to contact me or check our current job opportunities on LinkedIn.

Luke

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Gaia Resources started at a messy little table in my house, where I was trying to find ways to merge my previous careers of wannabe ecologist and GIS data nerd together into some sort of job for life. So, when Rachel asked me for something for our EOFY blog, I started thinking about the last year and then I kept falling down the rabbit hole that is 19 years deep! I think we might have to climb out of that rabbit hole for a while and instead focus on this last financial year, though.

Speaking of a trip down memory lane, here’s some of our team photos from the past

This last year presented us with a solid footing for moving forward for this year.  We are entering into the new year with a number of “repeat” or “extension” projects, especially in the Environmental space. Our environmental knowledge and past work resulted in us being re-engaged to work on two very large and important projects for biodiversity management in Australia – the Biodiversity Information Office (BIO), and the Biodiversity Data Repository (BDR). We’ve spoken about BIO on our blog in the past (like the recent blog on BIO), but I realise we’ve not talked a lot about the BDR.

That project, led by our federal Environment department (the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water) has been something we’ve worked on for a couple of years in the “data partner” role.  In this sense we are the ones that work with data providers to ensure that data can be provided to the BDR’s main repository, and then we run all that data through a detailed pipeline to ensure that it meets the needs of that repository when it gets there. This is really important – the need to access robust, authoritative biodiversity data in a timely manner is a key part of the reforms that are being delivered by this government.  It’s something that we’re proud to be involved with, and we’ll have to explain more about it in the future.

The BDR is a large initiative that can be broken down into an ingestion pipeline (which we manage), and then a repository to store the data

The BDR and BIO have been really positive environmental projects, but in the other part of our business – the Collections side – we have also been delivering on a range of projects, with some milestones coming just around the corner as we push towards a Production release of the Digital Preservation System (DPS) for the Queensland State Archives.  This will be a big milestone – the first time that an integrated DPS will be included in the Archives there – and to get there has been a lot of work by our dedicated team.  I’m really looking forward to seeing that go live – that will be a big part of our wins from this last financial year.

Collections and Environment have been our two focus areas for the last year, and our team has changed around those areas.  We’re also recruiting for more people to come along and help us make a difference – including a range of ads that are out now for particular jobs, too:

Two of our recent job ads that are still live at the time of posting this blog

With these projects continuing into the new year, we’ve got a pretty full book already – so recruitment is going to be continuing, and if you’re at all interested in the positions we talked about in the last recruiting blog, then drop us a line at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au. 

Next year we are celebrating 20 years of Gaia Resources, from that little table in my house to to a team of over 40 spread across Australia (and even some in Europe). Stay tuned for some changes that are coming and make sure to be subscribed to our newsletter.

Right – we better get on with it and start this new financial year then! In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about our coming projects, or about our recruitment then start a conversation with us on social media – LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter or drop us a line.  All our best wishes for the new year ahead, and we look forward to seeing you during it! 

Piers

The post Happy New (financial) Year! appeared first on Gaia Resources.

At the moment we’re recruiting for:

• Project Managers – to add to our team in the Project Management area, as we’re about to start some big new projects in the new financial year – we’ve been looking through our recruiters, but stay tuned for an ad coming soon too,
• Software Engineers – we have already advertised and are in the interview stage for our Senior Developer role, but we are also about to start looking for more Software Engineers to join our team for the large projects mentioned above,
• Business Analysts – we are still receiving applications from our recent Business Analyst job advertisement, to again bring on some more people to help with projects, and
• DevOps – we are about to also start recruiting for new DevOps team members, to help with the every-growing work managing our cloud infrastructure implementations.  Another job ad will be out soon for this as well.

If any of these interest you then either hit up the linked job ad above, or drop us a line at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au and send us a CV and some information on what you’re interested in, and why.

While we have been busy reaching out to our networks and to our recruiters to find good candidates for these positions, as well as the adverts already out or coming out shortly, we thought we might also talk a bit about what a job here looks like, too – the things you can’t quite put in the job ad.

• People first – one of our core values is about supporting our people, and making sure that we think of the person as well as the role that you play.  We have a whole raft of ways that we support our teams, including our Cultural Champions and a range of training and support around “soft skills” (like we mentioned back in May, last year, and again just recently).
• Flexibility – we pride ourselves on our flexibility around working arrangements, and most of our team work from home for part of the week at least – some people prefer entirely remote roles, and others prefer to come into an office space, but the choice is yours.  We also get you the things you need to make work happen – our “I Need Stuff” email address has had some hilarious requests over the years
• Autonomy with accountability – we allow people to manage their own time to achieve the outcomes that are necessary for their work. To that end you will also have Work Leads to help support you and to help you find that balance, and a team of people that look at workloads and solve any challenges there each week.
• Get good – our functional guilds are full of like minded people who work in the same disciplines, and our Functional leads are the ones that help you to get better at what it is that you do – along with all the other members of your cohort.  From coworking time to knowledge sharing to just plain ol’ lunch together – there are plenty of ways to build your skillsets.

We take our work seriously but we don’t take ourselves too seriously – after all life needs to have some balance and we need to find ways that we can all work together and have a bit of fun along the way.  So from things like the more formal “welcome lunches” we are having in the next few weeks, to the much less formal Friday drinks, gaming sessions, jam sessions and other shenanigans all add some colour and personality to the place – and makes a nice break from our remote lives these days.

As we mentioned, we’re looking for people that want to join our team and so if any of the positions above specifically interest you, or you would like to chuck your hat in the ring, then feel free to email us at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au and tell us about yourself!

Piers

The post We’re recruiting! appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The return to undertaking work travel still feels strange.  After COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions, we’re still very aware that there are plenty of viruses out there, so we do suggest to people to do what they need to in order to feel as safe as possible.  Gaia’s procedure “don’t come in if you are ill” is something we’ve been doing throughout and we want to keep, so that we don’t end up taking out the whole company with an outbreak of the flu – this used to happen in the past.  But for work trips – this means being aware of different people’s needs and requirements, and making sure that our clients are happy to accommodate during the meetings and workshops, which is, frankly, super easy these days. 

When we plan for work trips we try to make the people side of this paramount from the start. The team choose the flight schedule that works for them, so that they can be in the location we need in the best shape possible.  This also means that it creates the least disruption to their families and other commitments outside of work.  Of course, there is a need to be on site at a certain time, so there are parameters to consider here, but this flexibility is important for our team. You don’t want to start a work trip anxious that you’ve had to compromise on things like family!  

After travel and settling into the accommodation, we met up for the first time in person since COVID for some of us while we have brekky and get ready for the first workshop (L-R Megan, Piers, Mieke, Grant and Gail)

Accommodation is also an important choice for our team. We want somewhere close enough to the client site that you don’t have a hassle to get there.  A benefit of being within walking distance is that you can then also have some active recovery (non strenuous aerobic of physical activity) after the workshop as you walk back to the accommodation.  The key is that it needs to be spacious and nice enough that you don’t feel bad about living in a shoebox for a few days (we do provide accommodation for our team that extends across weekends either side of work trips if they want to hang around and explore a bit).  These little things can all go a long way towards making the whole time away from home just that little bit better.  All these little things add up.

So you’ve gotten to the workshop in the best possible state of mind – now we need to keep it that way, and that’s going to be different for everyone. I’ll use a recent trip as an example of how we do that.

Heading into the John Gorton Building in Canberra where our client is located – the basement was part of the intelligence efforts during World War Two (they have a small exhibition right underneath where we are walking)

For this trip five of our staff from different cities headed to Canberra to do some planning work for the Biodiversity Data Repository, a project we’re working on with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

I tend to recharge with solitude and exercise myself, so for me, I made sure to have at least one night that was free so I could go for a run around Lake Burley-Griffin as part of my active recovery.  For other people the way to recharge was to go and do some social stuff – and of course because we have our own Pickleball champion in Gail, that means that there was the option to go play in a local pickleball team, which a few of the gang took up.

Playing pickleball for the first time for some – Sarah wearing our #stayathome t-shirt we organised during COVID lockdowns

We also wanted to have some time together as well, so we managed to organise a team dinner, where the local team from Canberra (Sarah and Rhys) as well as the travellers (myself, Grant, Megan, Gail and Mieke) could get together and have a bit of time just chatting.  As an almost fully remote team, it’s super important to make the most of the time that we have face-to-face. We went out for a nice low key dinner, so that we could let our hair down (yes, metaphorically for at least two of us).

Team dinners with (L-R) Grant, Mieke, Gail, Sarah (back), Megan (front), Piers and Rhys

There was a lot of good work done in Canberra on this trip, for both the client and Gaia, but also we have some really good memories of the things we did as well – playing sports, catching up as a group, or getting some time out to recharge in nice surroundings.  

We even managed a quick pre-airport catch up with our colleagues from Hudson Molonglo (who are based in Canberra) to have a drink and chat about our work together on the Queensland State Archives project.

So, as the sun set on our trip to Canberra, we had made the time for us to be the best versions of ourselves – for our clients, colleagues and most importantly for our families when we got home.

The sunsets in Canberra can be really amazing (not shown: amazing autumnal colours in the trees around the Lake)

As we have previously spoken about looking after our people, that continues, and we evolve as the times change around us. We are focused on making sure that we have a supportive environment that means that we can be at our best when we work with our clients, and that we can look forward to the next trip as well.  While we might be remote, that doesn’t mean we don’t have to consider our people – in fact, it means we have to consider them even more and be proactive about how we do that.

If you’re interested in working with a company that does look after our people, then why not drop us a line at jobs@gaiaresources.com.au to see if we have an opening for someone with your skills?  We’re always looking out for people who want to be part of our team and to help us make a positive impact on the world.

Piers

The post Healthy Work Trips 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

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