Transforming User Knowledge into Archival Knowledge

http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/march2016-karberg

“Abstract

The users of archives have a vast body of knowledge about the records held in the archives. Some users have participated in the events, some have known the persons involved, some are experts in the subject matters. Their knowledge can cover important gaps that exist in archived knowledge. The objective of this paper is to explore methods to capture user knowledge and transform it to archival knowledge. We investigate the theory and describe the practical implementation developed at the National Archives of Estonia (NAE). In the theoretical part, we discuss the concept of knowledge and analyse its handling in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model. Having a clear focus on practical usability we identify a way to improve OAIS: complementing the model with a new link between Access and Data Management functional entities enables more efficient updating of descriptive information. Moving to practice, we describe the initial situation at the NAE, the needs, the approach taken and the solution — the new Archival Information System AIS 2.0. We explain key aspects of the system, including the use of 5-star Open Data in attaining the goal of knowledge transformation.

Keywords: Digital Preservation, Open Data, Knowledge, Crowdsourcing, OAIS”

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