Blurring Boundaries with/in Online Archives: The Case of the Museum of Everyday Writing

1. Blurring Boundaries with/in Online Archives: The Case of the Museum of Everyday Writing @MuseumofEW

2. Play around in the Museum To view the museum, go to museumofeverydaywriting.omeka.net To play around in the museum, go to omeka.net • Username: computersandwriting • Password: computersandwriting To view the style guide, go to museumofewadmin.wordpress.com @MuseumofEW

3. Beginnings • Inspired by a course about Everyday Writing • Founded by Megan, Jenn, and Sarah Marshall • Contributions from Dr. Yancey’s Digital Convergence class @MuseumofEW

4. Definition of Everyday Writing • Non-professional and non-academic • Ordinary composers • Mundane, invisible, discardable • Often valuable to specific readers and writers @MuseumofEW

5. The Goals of the Museum • Bring focus to understudied texts • Create a space for researchers, students, and teachers to observe and analyze everyday writing • Enable students and researchers to experiment with curation by designing exhibits @MuseumofEW

6. CMS Circus: Assessing and Choosing Content Management Systems Megan K. Keaton mkeaton@fsu.edu @meganfire

7. Content Management System • Enables uncomplicated navigation and participation in the Museum • Allows future curators to understand its structure and administration • Displays artifacts effectively Complications: • Lack of coding experience • Lack of monetary funds • Decisions about where the Museum should be housed • Hesitance to draw boundaries between different types of everyday writing

8. Benefits and Limitations

9. Benefits and Limitations

10. Omeka.net Wins Functionality over aesthetics • Limited coding needed • Support available at FSU • Ease of administrative transfer • Exhibits and collections allow for connections among item types • Worries about server

11. Creating Your Own Digital Archive Abilities and Resources • How much coding experience do you have? • How much time and/or labor can/will you dedicate to the archive? • Do you have access to a stable server? • What (if any) monetary funds do you have? Are there restrictions on how you can use those funds? • Will archive administrators change?

12. Creating Your Own Digital Archive Archive • Do you want to archive only or is curation important too? • How important are design and aesthetics? Users • How do you want users to participate in your archive? • What are the abilities of the users? • What level of support would users need to navigate and/or use the CMS independently?

13. DESIGNING METADATA: MEETING THE NEEDS OF AUDIENCE AND ARTIFACT Jennifer Enoch jenniferl.enoch@gmail.com

14. Or, DATA ABOUT THE ARTIFACTS is the backbone of the MoEW because it determines how the artifacts are organized within the Museum, how the artifacts can be searched, and the information to which researchers have access. Omeka allows for two kinds of metadata: DUBLIN CORE, a standardized set of datafields, and ITEM TYPE METADATA, which we design ourselves.

15. CONCERNS Definition of everyday writing Capaciousness of the artifacts Audience Affordances and constraints of Omeka User participation Transferability of administration Role of scholarship Searchability The FSU Postcard Archive

16. QUESTION #1 What are the types of artifacts that we want the museum to curate, and what kinds of metadata would researchers’ need for those artifacts? Or, where do we even start in creating a system of metadata?

17. QUESTION #1: WHERE DO WE START? Distribution/Circulation of a Sign Distribution/Circulation of a Letter • Location • How it was affixed • How visible it is • Movement between multiple locations • Envelop text • Addressee • Postmark • Postmark Date • Postmark Location • Was it re-mailed to another person

18. QUESTION #2 How do we honor the Museum’s capaciousness without the system of metadata becoming so complicated or idiosyncratic that it is impractical? Or, how do we make the metadata usable?

19. QUESTION #2:HOW DO WE MAKE IT USABLE?

20. QUESTION #2: HOW DO WE MAKE IT USABLE?

21. QUESTION #2: HOW DO WE MAKE IT USABLE? Item Type Metadata Common Metadata • Fields specific to the group of items • For example: Diaries and Journals • Description of cover • Cover text • Platform • Description of enclosed items • Source of enclosed items • Genre • Material • Circulation • Linguistic Text • Visual Text • Aural Text • Given Text • Dimensions

22. QUESTION #3 How do we organize the item types in a way that works within Omeka but still acknowledges the sometimes blurry distinctions between genres? Or, how do we allow for connections across artifacts?

23. QUESTION #3: ALLOW FOR CONNECTIONS? We use a stable but constantly expanding vocabularyfor subject terms, tags, and data fields such asMaterials. So, seemingly disparate artifacts can be connected via search terms.

24. QUESTION #3: ALLOW FOR CONNECTIONS? The Item Type definitions are broad and fluid. In practice, they are frequently refined based on the artifacts we receive.

25. QUESTION #3: ALLOW FOR CONNECTIONS? The terms and vocabulary used in the metadata and style guide are constantly negotiated with Museum users, allowing us to be sensitive to how users make connections.

26. QUESTION #4 How do we name the item types and data fields in a way that recognizes the rigorous scholarship in everyday writing and literacy that informs the museum but also works for a user who may not be versed in that scholarship? Or, how do we make the metadata accessible to multiple audiences?

27. QUESTION #4: MULTIPLE AUDIENCES Personal Correspondence Social Media • Texts that are written for a specific addressee or group of addressees. • Examples: letters, notes, greeting cards, dedicatory photo captions, personal emails, text messages. • Texts that are written for an individual or group and intended for both a specific addressee/groups of addressees and a non-specific public audience. • Examples: Facebook posts, open letters and emails, blogs, obituaries, zines, and Pinterest pin.

28. BUT, THIS METADATA SYSTEM IMMEDIATELY ENCOUNTERED SOME PROBLEMS

29. PROBLEM #1 Organizing the Item Types based on needed data fields resulted in a system in which each Item Type had a different organizational principle.

30. PROBLEM #1: ITEM TYPE ORGANIZATION

31. PROBLEM #1: ITEM TYPE ORGANIZATION

32. PROBLEM #2 Reorganizing the item types necessitated a redefinition of those item types and a reconfiguration of the data fields.

33. PROBLEM #2: DEFINITIONS

34. PROBLEM #2: DEFINITIONS

35. PROBLEM #2: DEFINITIONS

36. PROBLEM #3 The presentation of the style guide made the metadata system cumbersome to implement.

37. PROBLEM #2: DEFINITIONS • The presentation of the style guide, the primary text through which participants access the metadata descriptions, influences how they use that metdata. • Transferring the style guide from the Google Doc to Wordpress allowed us to more closely connect the format of the style guide and the format of Omeka, making the metadata easier to use. The Google Doc The Wordpress Site

38. A METADATA HEURISTIC Finally….

39. CREATING YOUR OWN DIGITAL ARCHIVE Users Archive • Who are the archive’s users? What will the users want or need from the archive? • What kind of background will users have with archives and/or your type of artifacts? • How will users participate in the archive? • How do you imagine users working in the archive? • How will users search the archive? What search terms are they likely to use? • What kinds of artifacts will you archive? What information will users need about the artifacts? How will they use the artifacts? • What are your archive’s goals? • How will the archive be administrated? Will there be multiple administrators? How will administrative work be distributed? • Do you have physical copies of the artifacts?

40. CREATING YOUR OWN DIGITAL ARCHIVE Abilities and Resources • How do scholars in your field discuss your type of artifacts? What key terms do they use? • What models do you have for your archive? How do those models structure their metadata? • Will users or administrators require supplementary texts? • How will the creation of your metadata incorporate feedback from users or other resources? • What are the constraints and affordances of your content management system?

41. The Museum of Everyday Writing: A User’s Experience Amy Cicchino Florida State University atc15c@my.fsu.edu

42. How can users contribute?

43. Sharon Howard (2009) listed several site characteristics that are necessary in promoting user-participation; they include: • awareness of the archive and its resources, • transparency in directions and goals • the ability for the participant to operate and navigate the platform “expertly” • tools that are simple and “pleasureable” to use • immediate feelings of gratification or usefulness in the participant upon completion because they have connected to a community Link to Howard’s presentation slides: http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20130607131020/http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/events/2009/06/sharon_howard_1e.pdf

44. Creating Your Own Digital Archive Abilities and Resources: • How does technology support or disrupt the participation of the user in the archive? • How will provided resources ease this relationship? Archive: • How are the goals of the archive communicated to the user? Which goals are negotiable and which are fixed to the identity of the archive itself? Users: • Who are the people participating in this archive and what experiences and knowledge do they bring? • In allowing users to contribute to and curate the archive, how much control will the archivist retain and how much control will the user be given?

45. The Evolution of the Style Guide: From Google Doc to Word Press

47. Creating Your Own Digital Archive Abilities and Resources: • How will a balance be created between a user’s need for extensive tagging options and a system’s need for a limited number of tagging categories? Archive: • When coming to a point of conflict with a user’s contribution, how will the archivist move forward while still preserving the archive’s goal to distribute agency? Users: • When users have to make uncertain tagging decisions, what resources will guide them? • How will resources consider all kinds of users and the various experiences (or lack thereof) that they bring?

48. Works Cited Howard, Sharon. “User Generated Content: Old Bailey Proceedings Online.” JISC Digital Content Conference. Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel, South Cerney, Gloucestershire, UK. 30 June 2009. Palmer, Joy. “Archive 2.0: If We Build It, Will They Come?” Ariadne 60 (2009). Web. Jim Ridolfo, William Hart-Davidson and Michael McLeod . “Balancing Stakeholder Needs: Archive 2.0 as Community-centred Design." Ariadne 63 (2010). Web.