Archives are, more than ever, organizational and technological constructs, based on organizational demands, desires, and considerations influencing configuration, management, appraisal, and preservation. For that reason, they are, more than ever, distortions of reality, offering biased (and/or manipulated) images of the past and present an extremely simplified mirror of social reality. The information objects within that archive are (again: more than ever), fragile, manipulable, of disputable provenance, doubtful context, and uncertain quality. Their authenticity is in jeopardy.The “Allure of Digital Archives” will be more about finding knowledge about the archive as a whole than about finding knowledge hidden in the information objects that are its constituents. It will be about determining the value of a digital archive as a “trusted” resource for historical research. To be successful in that endeavour, it will be necessary to assess the possibility to “reconstruct the past” of the digital archive. That assessment would allow historians to understand quality, provenance, context, content, and accessibility of the digital archive, not only in its design stage but also in its life cycle.In this chapter, I present the theoretical framework of the “Archive–as–Is” as an instrument for such an assessment. It is possible for historians to use this framework as a declarative model for the way archives have been designed, configured, managed, and maintained. It will allow historians to understand why archives are as they are, and why records are part of it (or not). Using the framework, historians can determine the research value of a digital archive as a historical resource.
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This paper has the objective of finding a viable theoretical foundation for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) in World 2.0. The framework of the “Archive-as-Is” is an organization-oriented archival theory. The framework is a declarative model for understanding the archive “as is”, how it has been designed, constructed, processed, manipulated, and managed, and how it has “grown” to be the archive that the organization that generated it, wanted it to be. From the moment of their creation, archives are distortions of reality, only presenting biased images of the past due to the way organizations (and the people) “behave”. Contextualizing (by archivists) will be crucial to “correct” that distortion as much as is possible. The challenge in World 2.0 is to ensure that the organizational archive can be used as a “trusted” resource and be managed in such a way that an organization can survive the challenges of World 2.0. The theoretical framework of the “Archive-as-Is” may be the model that could be used to realize just that.--Spanish:Este trabajo tiene como objetivo encontrar una base teórica viable para la gestión de la información empresarial (EIM) en un Mundo 2.0. El entorno “Archive-as-Is” es una teoría archivística dirigida a la organización. Es un modelo para entender el archivo "tal cual", cómo se diseñó, construyó, procesó, manipuló y administró, y cómo "creció" para constituir el archivo que la organización que lo generó quería que fuera. Desde el momento de su creación, los archivos son distorsiones de la realidad, solo presentan imágenes sesgadas del pasado debido a la forma en que las organizaciones (y las personas) se "comportan". La contextualización (de los archiveros) será crucial para "corregir" la distorsión. El desafío es garantizar que el archivo se pueda utilizar como un recurso “confiable” y se administre de tal manera que una organización pueda sobrevivir a los desafíos de Mundo 2.0. El marco de actuación del "Archive-as-Is" podría utilizarse para conseguirlo.
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In 2017, I introduced a new theoretical framework in Archival Science, that of the ‘Archive–as–Is’. This framework proposes a theoretical foundation for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) in World 2.0, the virtual, interactive, and hyper connected platform that is developing around us. This framework should allow EIM to end the existing ‘information chaos’, to computerize information management, to improve the organizational ability to reach business objectives, and to define business strategies. The concepts of records and archives are crucial for those endeavours. The framework of the ‘Archive–as–Is’ is an organization–oriented archival theory, consisting of five components, namely: [1] four dimensions of information, [2] two archival principles, [3] five requirements of information accessibility, [4] the information value chain; and [5] organizational behaviour. In this paper, the subject of research is component 5 of the framework: organizational behaviour. Behaviour of employees (including archivists) is one of the most complicated aspects within organizations when creating, processing, managing, and preserving information, records, and archives. There is an almost universal ‘sound of silence’ in scholarly literature from archival and information studies although this subject and its effects on information management are studied extensively in many other disciplines, like psychology, sociology, anthropology, and organization science. In this paper, I want to study how and why employees behave as they do when they are working with records and archives and how EIM is influenced by this behaviour.
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The external expectations of organizational accountability force organizational leaders to find solutions and answers in organizational (and information) governance to assuage the feelings of doubt and unease about the behaviour of the organization and its employees that continuously seem to be expressed in the organizational environment. Organizational leaders have to align the interests of their share– and stakeholders in finding a balance between performance and accountability, individual and collective ethical approaches, and business ethics based on compliance, based on integrity, or both. They have to integrate accountability in organizational governance based on a strategy that defines boundaries for rules and routines. They need to define authority structures and find ways to control the behaviour of their employees, without being very restrictive and coercive. They have to implement accountability structures in organizational interactions that are extremely complex, nonlinear, and dynamic, in which (mostly informal) relational networks of employees traverse formal structures. Formal processes, rules, and regulations, used for control and compliance, cannot handle such environments, continuously in ‘social flux’, unpredictable, unstable, and (largely) unmanageable. It is a challenging task that asks exceptional management skills from organizational leaders. The external expectations of accountability cannot be neglected, even if it is not always clear what is exactly meant with that concept. Why is this (very old) concept still of importance for modern organizations?In this book, organizational governance, information governance, and accountability are the core subjects, just like the relationship between them. A framework is presented of twelve manifestations of organizational accountability the every organization had to deal with. An approach is introduced for strategically govern organizational accountability with three components: behaviour, accountability, and external assessments. The core propositions in this book are that without paying strategic attention to the behaviour of employees and managers and to information governance and management, it will be extremely difficult for organizational leaders to find a balance between the two objectives of organizational governance: performance and accountability.
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African photography has emerged as a significant focus of research and scholarship over the last twenty years, the result of a growing interest in postcolonial societies and cultures and a turn towards visual evidence across the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, many rich and fascinating photographic collections have come to light. This volume explores the complex theoretical and practical issues involved in the study of African photographic archives, based on case studies drawn from across the continent dating from the 19th century to the present day. Chapters consider what constitutes an archive, from the familiar mission and state archives to more local, vernacular and personal accumulations of photographs; the importance of a critical and reflexive engagement with photographic collections; and the question of where and what is 'Africa', as constructed in the photographic archive. Essential reading for all researchers working with photographic archives, this book consolidates current thinking on the topic and sets the agenda for future research in this field.
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The Technical Departments at the Fontys University of Professional Education in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, offer a course which is devel-oped around the principles of Concurrent Engi-neering. Integrated Product Development (IPD) project teams are multi-disciplinary groups which develop products in co-operation with the regional industry. The companies involved are sponsoring the developments and the revenue is being used for more intensive group coaching by tutors and specialists. We experimented with communication technology to find a good compromise between time and costs. It turned out that intelligent pagers resulted in minor improvements, mobile phones are still too expensive, e-mail is functional but creates no group cohesion and most of the com-panies are rather conservative in their use of new communication tools. We also found out that the use of a Computer Supported Co-operative Work (CSCW) server is a possibility for information interchange as an alternative for e-mail attachments. The server is also used as an archive. In future we expect that CSCW will be an effective tool for project sup-port and control.
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In the fall of 1999, we started, the Integrated Product Development- Collaborative Engineering ( IPD-CE) project as a first pilot. We experimented with modern communication technology in order to find useful tools for facilitating the cooperative work and the contacts of all the participants. Teams have been formed with engineering students from Lehigh University in the US, the Fontys University in Eindhoven, The Netherlands and from the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany. In the fall of 2000 we continued and also cooperated with the Finnish Oulu Polytechnic. It turned out that group cohesion stayed low (students did not meet in real life), and that Internet is not mature enough yet for desktop video conferencing. Chatting and email were in these projects by far the most important communication media. We also found out that the use of a Computer Support for Cooperative Work (CSCW) server is a possibility for information interchange. The server can also be used as an electronic project archive. Points to optimise are: 1. We didn't fully match the complete assignments of the groups; 2. We allowed the groups to divide the work in such parts that those were developed and prototyped almost locally; 3. We haven't guided the fall 2000 teams strong enough along our learning curve and experiences from previous groups. 4. We didn't stick strong enough to the, by the groups developed, protocols for email and chat sessions. 5. We should facilitate video conferencing via V-span during the project to enhance the group performance and commitment.
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Ebifananyi II – People Poses Places Andrea Stultiens.People Poses Places is the second part of Ebifananyi, a book series that visualises historical Ugandan photo collections. In People Poses Places we delve into the archive of the photographer Musa Katuramu. In the mid 1930s, teacher and carpenter Musa Katuramu went around his neighbourhood with a simple camera to make portraits of family and friends. His portraits are remarkably intimate and revealing. This is unusual for the time and region where the images were produced. Most camera-owners were outsiders such as missionaries or colonists. Katuramu was an amateur photographer that constructed studios on site. The technology of his camera was limited but he maintained one basic rule that worked; never point your camera towards the sun. Katuramu’s archive was carefully stored by his son Jerry Bagonza. The archive consists of roughly 1500 negatives and 750 prints that have never been shown before. The book is composed of archival images that alternate with contemporary photographs made by Andrea Stultiens and her colleague Rumazi Canon, who grew up in the same region. People Poses Places is the second publication from a series of at least eight books, which present themselves as small intimate publications with an open spine and the local word for photographs printed on it, that literally translates into likenesses.
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