Innovation in archives

Say Yes to Digital Surrogates: Strengthening the Archival Record in the Postcustodial Era (2016)

• At UNLV University Libraries, scan-and return refers to a practice in which original materials are, by agreement, loaned to the archives for digitization (scanning or digital photography) and then returned to the owners.1 The results are referred to as digital surrogates because they stand in for the originals; however, they are treated with the same care that is afforded to born-digital materials—they are accessioned, processed, preserved, and made accessible to researchers in accordance with professional values and ethics.2 T
• James O’Toole voiced the complexities presented by multiple copies of archival records in his article “On the Idea of Uniqueness,” in which he identified four ways that archival materials can be considered unique: the uniqueness of records themselves (physical items), the uniqueness of the information contained within records, the uniqueness of the process and functions that produced the records, and/ or the uniqueness of aggregations of records.15 Although digital surrogates may not be physically unique items, O’Toole argued that uniqueness is best understood in relative rather than absolute terms. He implored archivists to “inquire how [records] are unique (if they are) and, just as important, whether and why that matters.
• 5 In her 1986 article, “Who Controls the Past,” Samuels built upon Ham’s ideas, emphasizing the importance of the archivist’s role as appraiser and collector, and echoing his appeal for repositories to work together to augment the record where incomplete. Rather than simply accepting whatever records are donated to or deposited with the archives, as Jenkinson prescribed, documentation strategy recommends that archivists take an active role in collecting, appraising, and even creating records.46 
•  John Whaley Jr.’s 1994 paper, “Digitizing History,” provides one of the earliest examples of a repository collecting digital surrogates of materials that remained in the hands of private individuals. The article describes how Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) built its MultiCultural Archives database, beginning with scans of physical documents borrowed from the African-American community. Scan-and-return was a way for “document owners to share the information contained in the documents without having to relinquish their ownership.”
•  the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, sponsored by Washington State University (WSU) in collaboration with the local community, brings together digital surrogates of materials related to indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau. The portal provides access to collections focused on specific groups, each of which is directly curated by a representative from the group documented therein. 
• Five years later the Utah Academic Library Consortium collaborated with the Mountain West Digital Library to create Pioneers in Your Attic, a virtual collection of primary resources (letters, photographs, diaries, etc.) on the overland migration of pioneers to the Western United States in the 1800s. Nearly forty participating libraries and historical societies sponsored scanning days, collecting digital surrogates (with descriptions and contextual information) from individuals. As stated on the project website, “By scanning these items and providing online access, the Legacy Project will allow individuals to retain their original items, yet preserve and share the intellectual and historical content of these valuable documents.”
• More recently, the University of Texas (UT) at Austin Libraries sponsored initiatives to create virtual collections, the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive (AHPN),65 both of which follow noncustodial models. The UT Austin Libraries partnered with organizations in Rwanda and Guatemala to provide ongoing access to their records without ever taking custody of the materials. Although the projects were conceived within a scan-andreturn framework, UT Austin found partner organizations unwilling to let materials go, even briefly for the purpose of digitization, forcing UT Austin Libraries to revise their approach. Rather than performing the scanning in Texas as originally planned, UT Austin Libraries provided partners with the direction and resources to build local capacity for digitization, description, and preservation of their own cultural records. 
• three benefits of scan-and-return practices:  Access: The material was available (onsite) to the public for 35 years prior to the recent donation of the originals.  Preservation: Some of the surrogate photographs created in 1980-1981 are clearer or more complete than the original photographs from which they were derived (due to wear and tear or the less favorable conditions in which the originals were kept in the intervening years).  Donor/community relations: By responsibly stewarding the surrogates, UNLV earned the trust of the family who then initiated donation of the originals in 2015
• Community Documentation Projects,  “scanning days” 
• Developing scan-and-return policies and procedures at UNLV
• Most of UNLV Libraries' digital collections in CONTENTdm are thematic and comprised of multiple manuscript collections. Since CONTENTdm organizes and displays material at the level of the digital object, the provenance of each digital object is provided by citing the manuscript collection name and number in the source field of the digital object and, with some exceptions, also by basing the digital ID on the manuscript collection number. CONTENTdm is not ideal for visually displaying complex hierarchical relationships between all components of an archival collection, but creating a compound object allows the context of a subset of the collection to be made easily apparent to the user. Individual items within compound objects, however, are not immediately apparent when searching or browsing. Bringing significant items to the surface for users therefore requires thoughtful decisions during digitization related to the relative value of individual items, the importance of context, and, ultimately, the user experience.
• Efficient processing methods are applied wherever appropriate and, in most cases, if described at the folder level in the finding aid, the material from that folder is described and represented as a compound digital object. It would be ideal to map digital objects in CONTENTdm to their corresponding descriptions in the finding aid, but this goal is currently impeded by a lack of persistent identifiers and underdeveloped access tools at UNLV. Special Collections improvises by adding URLs in finding aids and MARC records that point to the digital materials at the collectionlevel. The Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project team also created a Web portal to bring together digital surrogates, finding aids, and other contextual information related to the Jewish community.  
• Positive outcomes
  • Improved discovery and access 
  • Improved preservation of the historical record
  • Improved relationships with the community
• Concerns
  • Commitment of resources -  An ongoing commitment of resources is required to maintain servers, conduct periodic health checks, migrate, and display digital objects, just as storage and care of analog materials requires special enclosures, continuous climate control, maintenance of facilities, and staffing of a reading room. 
  • Long-term preservation
• Use of digital surrogates