Transcript Grand Challenges in Archival Education and Research

AERI 2011 – Boston
Grand Challenges in
Archival Education and
Research
Sue McKemmish
www.monash.edu.au
Grand Societal Challenges
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Peace and Security
– Peace building
– Countering terrorism
– Decolonization
Development
– Democracy, governance and well being
– Social and economic development
– Sustainable development
Human Rights
– Violence against women and children
– Genocide
– Indigenous peoples
United Nations Website:
– Human trafficking
http://www.un.org/en/
– Treatment of refugees
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Grand Societal Challenges
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Global financial crisis
Climate change
– Green economy
– Environmental knowledge for change
Health and well being
Social justice
Digital divide/information divide
Corporate governance, accountability, transparency
Sustainable communities
Communities in flux
Government,
Democratisation – “citizen society”
Community, Advocacy
Globalisation
Websites
Localisation
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Grand Societal Challenges
human rights
self-determination
freedom from
discrimination
civil rights
cultural rights
socio-economic rights
cultural rights
land rights
memory rights
information rights
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Research & Education Challenges, Partnerships,
“Killer Questions”, Problems & Capabilities
• Identifying research and education challenges associated
with Grand Societal Challenges
• Forming partnerships around related “killer questions”
(academics, organisations, communities)
• Deconstructing the questions into research and education
problems to be addressed by programs and projects
• Putting together required knowledge and skill set
(discipline and domain expertise, research strengths)
• Developing/putting together required governance and
infrastructure (including research and education frameworks,
ethical frameworks, technologies, systems, research
methodologies, methods, techniques, pedagogies)
• Securing funding/resourcing
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Grand Societal Challenge: Effective Healthcare in
USA
• safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient,
and equitable healthcare is not being delivered
• health care processes becoming more complex
and more time-constrained; demands placed on
care providers becoming more intense
• short-term, incremental improvements required
• long-term transformation of healthcare system
essential
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Health Informatics Challenge
• Healthcare is an information and knowledge intensive
enterprise, but healthcare IT and information systems
are poorly designed
Computational Technology for Effective Health Care (National Academies,
Washington; www.nap.edu/catalog/12572.html; accessed 08072011)
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Health Informatics Research Problem
• 21st century health care requires intensive, patient-centred
information* and knowledge# management, using
interoperable IT and information systems to create, acquire,
manage, analyze, integrate, and deliver relevant, timely,
reliable information from multiple sources to multiple
locations, and to document patient-doctor interaction,
treatments, patient monitoring and outcomes in patient
records
• Nationwide frameworks are required to ensure the
interoperability of systems across organizations, and data
sharing and integration across systems
*Information includes medical records, lab test results, prevention and
treatment information, drug information, financial information,
research data, best practice data
#Knowledge resides in medical literature, individual clinicians, care
providers and patients, health care processes, organizational culture
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Health & Well Being:
Health Informatics
Programs @ Monash
iHealth
•Modeling the Virtual
Patient
•Simulations which
integrate research and best
practice data with data
specific to individual patient
•Integrated data on
conditions, preventative
measures, treatments and
outcomes
mHealthcare
•Health care any place any
time, using mobile devices
and sensor networks in
hospital, clinic, and home
•Self-documenting
environments to capture
provider-patient interaction
and patient monitoring data
•Supporting telemedicine
and remote delivery of
health care
eDoctors, eCarers,
ePatients*
•Delivering timely, relevant,
reliable health information to
enable health care providers
and carers, and empower
patients to become expert in
managing their own conditions
•Modeling and supporting
multi-player decision-making
•Integrating data from multiple
sources
Optimal
eHealthcare
• Meeting people’s needs
while minimising cost
•Optimising health care
related information
resources and their
deployment in and across
organisations
•Optimising health care
infrastructure and systems
Discipline and Domain Expertise
Medicine * Health Studies * Expert Patient Knowledge
Data Mining * Computer Modeling of Complex Systems * Simulation and Visualization * Reasoning Under Uncertainty
* High Performance Computing * Optimisation * Mobile Computing * Sensor Networks * Data Management &
Accessibility * Knowledge Management * Records Management and Archives * Imaging * Multimedia Applications *
Information and Decision Support Systems * System Interoperability * Human-Computer Interaction * Biomedical
Informatics * Community Informatics
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http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/challenges/
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health-wellbeing/
Grand Societal Challenge: Closing the Gap
for Indigenous Australians
• Closing the gap in all areas and achieving better social
and economic outcomes – life expectancy, child
mortality, literacy and numeracy, Yr 12 attainment rates,
employment
• Valuing the cultural history and knowledge of
Indigenous people: Indigenous culture is a critical part
of Australia’s identity and strengthening it is a core
element of sustaining a strong and healthy Indigenous
community
Australia 2020 Summit, Government Response, Chapter 7: Options for the
future of Indigenous Australia
http://www.australia2020.gov.au/response/index.cfm; accessed 08072011
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Social and Community Informatics
Challenges and Research Questions
• How can social and community informatics support
sustainable Indigenous communities by promoting
social inclusion and bridging the digital and information
divides?
• What are the best ways to optimise the use of digital
technologies to document, record, share and celebrate
Indigenous knowledge and culture, locally and globally?
• How can social and community informatics support
community-centred, participatory research which
articulates, strengthens, preserves, disseminates and
celebrates Indigenous culture to sustain Indigenous
communities, and play an integral part in Australian
identity?
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Closing the Gap for
Indigenous Australians:
Social and Community
Informatics Programs @
Monash
Bridging the
Digital Divide:
Opening
Digital
Doorways
Bridging the
Information
Divide:
Smart
Information
Portals
Doing IT and
IM Better in
Indigenous
Community
Organisations
Indigenous
Archiving
and
Knowledge
Management
Monash
Country
Lines
Archive:
Visualising
Country
Working With
Communities
as Partners
in Education
and
Research
Discipline and Domain Knowledge
Indigenous Studies * Indigenous Knowledge * Community Knowledge
Data Mining * Animation, Simulation and Visualization * Mobile Computing * Sensor
Networks * Data Management & Accessibility * Knowledge Management * Records
Management and Archives * Imaging * Multimedia and Games Applications * Information and
Decision Support Systems * Human-Computer Interaction * Community Informatics
www.monash.edu.au
http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/challenges/
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social-inclusion/
Archival Challenges – Challenging Archival
Discipline and Practice
• Archival theory, meta-prescriptions,
principles, concepts
• Archival functionality – e.g. appraisal,
metadata and descriptive regimes,
access
• Archival structures, strategies and
tactics
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Grand Societal Challenges and Archival
Challenges: Examples
Peace and Security
Decolonization
Development
Democratization
Governance & well being
Human Rights
Indigenous peoples
Climate Change
Green economy
Social Justice/Inclusion
Bridging digital/information
divide
Decolonizing the archive,
archival functionality and
recordkeeping practice
Archival access
Accountability & transparency
Participatory archival models;
sustainable community
archives
An integrated global archive of
records relating to climate
change
Bridging the archival divide
Diversifying the profession
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Brainstorming Session
• Imagine a UN Archives and Evidence Commission on climate
change or any other global problem/grand societal challenge*
• AERI has been asked:
– to identify associated archival research and education
challenges; and to recommend partnerships, programs
and projects to address them
• Your task:
– Identify ONE archival research and/or education
challenge
– Link it to related societal challenge(s)
– Identify partners (academic, organisations, communities)
with expertise and domain knowledge needed to address
the archival challenge
– List programs/projects
– Reflect on experience, expertise and knowledge you
could bring to the table
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Archival Grand Challenge #1: the archival
multiverse
Can we move from “an archival
universe dominated by one
cultural paradigm to an archival
multiverse; from a world
constructed in terms of “the
one” and “the other” to a world
of multiple ways of knowing and
practicing, of multiple narratives
co-existing in one space”?
Pluralizing the Archival Curriculum
Group, ‘Educating for the
archival multiverse’ American Archivist
Spring, 2011
• Building inclusive
archival education
curriculum, teaching
and learning
• Engaging educators,
students, communities
• Diversifying the
profession
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I want to tell a different story. It’s about how
Aboriginal people can be the authors of our
stories and not the passive and powerless
subjects of stories told and written by others. It
is the role of government and others, including
archivists and recordkeepers to enable
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to move
from passive and powerless subjects to active
participatory agents. I hope my insights assist
in pushing towards an archive and
recordkeeping system that facilitates the active
participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Island peoples.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social
Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, 12 October
2010
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/index.h
tml
Valuing the cultural history and knowledge of
Indigenous people: Indigenous culture is a
critical part of Australia’s identity and
strengthening it is a core element of
sustaining a strong and healthy Indigenous
community
Australia 2020 Summit,
Government Response, Chapter 7: Options
for the future of Indigenous Australia
http://www.australia2020.gov.au/response/ind
ex.cfm
Archival Grand Challenge #2
•Educating archivists and records managers to engage with Indigenous issues.
•Researching how to embed Indigenous human rights in archival law, policy,
culture and practice.
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WikiLeaks: a radical break with traditional time-based
access regimes and “let the dust settle” approaches to
appraisal
“WikiLeaks is forcing an agenda for greater access to
contemporary records as a means by which an informed
citizenry is empowered to test relationships of power
exercised in their name. The impetus for greater
democratization of the archive is being embraced in theory in
the open access and transparency agendas of various
agencies of power within our society. Yet this actually entails
radical change globally, not piecemeal, uncoordinated action
at national and state level.”
(Barbara Reed in Frank Upward, Sue McKemmish & Barbara Reed
(2011), “Archivists and Changing Social and Information Spaces: A
continuum approach to recordkeeping and archiving in online
cultures”, Archivaria 72 (in press)
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Archival Grand Challenge #3: addressing
plurality and complexity
“WikiLeaks is a
provocative instance of
an aberrant, digital
archive which reinvents
professional structures,
strategies and tactics to
deal with the complexity
of place, time, volume,
authority and ultimately
accountability in our
online recordkeeping
present and future, while
demonstrating innovative
use of Web
technologies.”
Barbara Reed (op.cit.)
Complexity and plurality of the worlds of
recorded information in online cultures
• Are archival theories and practice up for it?
• What constitutes the archive/archival
functionality in online cultures?
• Can we transform archival functionality and
professional recordkeeping practice to better
engage with complexity and plurality.
• Can we develop global and local archival
structures, strategies and tactics to address
“the infinitely expanding … continuum of
recorded information that is engulfing us”
(Frank Upward).
Can we transform education and deliver research
outcomes to address plurality and complexity?
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