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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The Internet and computers increasingly determine our daily lives. This goes for almost everyone in the Netherlands. Still, it is mostly teenagers who are well informed on how to use all the possibilities of new technologies. They are building a digital world of their own that parents usually know very little about. This booklet intends to inform teachers, parents and other interested parties on what teenagers are actually doing online and how important it is to keep abreast of the new developments that the Internet and computers bring into their world. On the basis of research into these issues in the Netherlands and abroad we attempt to indicate what the digital world of teenagers looks like and how it differs from that of grown-ups. What do they do, exactly, and why? We also look into teenagers’ ICT behaviour and into dangers and abuse of the Internet. Moreover we provide tips for parents and teachers on how to handle certain phenomena. This book does not pretend to provide an exhaustive overview of the digital world of teenagers. It is focused on some important characteristics and parts of that world. It reports on research of the INHOLLAND Centre for eLearning into various aspects of ICT behaviour among teenagers. The research was undertaken in the spring of 2006, focusing mainly on texting, networking, gaming, dangers and abuse on the Internet and the digital relation between school and the home. Ultimately we are especially concerned with the question of what teenagers really learn in their digital world, and how education can profit. This book also addresses that issue.
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Can you remember the last time the ground gave way beneath you? When you thought the ground was stable, but for some reason it wasn’t? Perhaps you encountered a pothole on the streets of Amsterdam, or you were renovating your house and broke through the floor. Perhaps there was a molehill in a park or garden. You probably had to hold on to something to steady yourself. Perhaps you even slipped or fell. While I sincerely hope that nobody here was hurt in the process, I would like you to keep that feeling in your mind when reading what follows. It is the central theme of the words that will follow. The ground beneath our feet today is not as stable as the streets of Amsterdam, your park around the corner or even a poorly renovated upstairs bedroom. This is because whatever devices we use and whatever pathways we choose, we all live in hybrid physical and digital social spaces (Kitchin and Dodge 2011). Digital social spaces can be social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, but also chat apps like WhatsApp or Signal. Crucially, social spaces are increasingly hybrid, in which conversations take place across digital spaces (WhatsApp chat group) and physical spaces (meeting friends in a cafe) simultaneously. The ground beneath our feet is not made of concrete or stone or wood but of bits and bytes.
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Aim: There is often a gap between the ideal of involving older persons iteratively throughout the design process of digital technology, and actual practice. Until now, the lens of ageism has not been applied to address this gap. The goals of this study were: to voice the perspectives and experiences of older persons who participated in co-designing regarding the design process; their perceived role in co-designing and intergenerational interaction with the designers; and apparent manifestations of ageism that potentially influence the design of digital technology. Methods: Twenty-one older persons participated in three focus groups. Five themes were identified using thematic analysis which combined a critical ageism ‘lens’ deductive approach and an inductive approach. Results: Ageism was experienced by participants in their daily lives and interactions with the designers during the design process. Negative images of ageing were pointed out as a potential influencing factor on design decisions. Nevertheless, positive experiences of inclusive design pointed out the importance of “partnership” in the design process. Participants defined the “ultimate partnership” in co-designing as processes in which they were involved from the beginning, iteratively, in a participatory approach. Such processes were perceived as leading to successful design outcomes, which they would like to use, and reduced intergenerational tension. Conclusions: This study highlights the potential role of ageism as a detrimental factor in how digital technologies are designed. Viewing older persons as partners in co-designing and aspiring to more inclusive design processes may promote designing technologies that are needed, wanted and used.
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Parents who grew up without digital monitoring have a plethora of parental monitoring opportunities at their disposal. While they can engage in surveillance practices to safeguard their children, they also have to balance freedom against control. This research is based on in-depth interviews with eleven early adolescents and eleven parents to investigate everyday negotiations of parental monitoring. Parental monitoring is presented as a form of lateral surveillance because it entails parents engaging in surveillance practices to monitor their children. The results indicate that some parents are motivated to use digital monitoring tools to safeguard and guide their children, while others refrain from surveillance practices to prioritise freedom and trust. The most common forms of surveillance are location tracking and the monitoring of digital behaviour and screen time. Moreover, we provide unique insights into the use of student tracking systems as an impactful form of control. Early adolescents negotiate these parental monitoring practices, with responses ranging from acceptance to active forms of resistance. Some children also monitor their parents, showcasing a reciprocal form of lateral surveillance. In all families, monitoring practices are negotiated in open conversations that also foster digital resilience. This study shows that the concepts of parental monitoring and lateral surveillance fall short in grasping the reciprocal character of monitoring and the power dynamics in parent-child relations. We therefore propose that monitoring practices in families can best be understood as family surveillance, providing a novel concept to understand how surveillance is embedded in contemporary media practices among interconnected family members.
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Information and communications technologies (ICT) can be very important to provide access to urban cultural heritage collections. Urban archives contain a lot of (historical) information about people, places, events, objects, trade and artefacts. Its worthwhile to make this information accessible for a bigger public. The core challenge nowadays is to explore the role and meaning of ICT in disseminating this historical knowledge in public spaces. In this paper, we will research the theoretical background of the information value chain in archival science and of the use and context of new media technologies in public spaces. Our research method was a combination of desk research and a case study, in which new interactive media technologies were used to reconstruct historical images of Amsterdam in public spaces. The case study blended digital historical content with physical interactions to provide a user experience of urban history by using innovative storytelling techniques. The resulting prototype made it possible to disseminate historical information from Amsterdam urban archives.
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Within eGovernment, trust in electronic stored information (ESI) is a necessity. In the last decades, most organizations underwent substantial reorganization. The integration of structured data in relational databases has improved documentation of business transactions and increased data quality. That integration has improved accountability as well. Almost 90% of the information that organizations manage is unstructured (e.g., e-mail, documents, multimedia files, etc.). Those files cannot be integrated into a traditional database in an easy way. Like structured data, unstructured ESI in organizations can be denoted as records, when it is meant to be (and used as) evidence for organizational policies, decisions, products, actions and transactions. Stakeholders in eGovernment, like citizens, governments and courts, are making increasing demands for the trustworthiness of this ESI for privacy, evidential and transparency reasons. A theoretical analysis of literature of information, organization and archival science illustrates that for delivering evidence, reconstruction of the past is essential, even in this age of information overload. We want to analyse how Digital Archiving and eDiscovery contribute to the realization of trusted ESI, to the reconstruction of the past and to delivering evidence. Digital Archiving ensures (by implementing and managing the ‘information value chain’) that: [1] ESI can be trusted, that it meets the necessary three dimensions of information: quality, context and relevance, and that [2] trusted ESI meets the remaining fourth dimension of information: survival, so that it is preserved for as long as is necessary (even indefinitely) to comply to privacy, accountability and transparency regulations. EDiscovery is any process (or series of processes) in which (trusted) ESI is sought, located, secured and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. A difference between the two mechanisms is that Digital Archiving is implemented ex ante and eDiscovery ex post legal proceedings. The combination of both mechanisms ensures that organizations have a documented understanding of [1] the processing of policies, decisions, products, actions and transactions within (inter-) organizational processes; [2] the way organizations account for those policies, decisions, products, actions and transactions within their business processes; and [3] the reconstruction of policies, decisions, products, actions and transactions from business processes over time. This understanding is extremely important for the realization of eGovernment, for which reconstruction of the past is an essential functionality. Both mechanisms are illustrated with references to practical examples.
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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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In the last decade, organizations have re-engineered their business processes and started using standard software solutions. Integration of structured data in relational databases has improved documentation of business transactions and increased data quality. But almost 90% of the information cannot be integrated in relational data bases. This amount of ‘unstructured’ information is exploding within the Enterprise 2.0. The use of social media tools to enhance collaboration, creates corporate blogs, wikis, forums, and other types of unstructured information. Structured and unstructured information are records, meant and used as evidence for policies, decisions, products, actions and transactions. Most stakeholders are making increasing demands for the trustworthiness of records for accountability reasons. In this age of evolving social media use, organizational chains, inter-organizational data warehouses and cloud computing, it is crucial for the Enterprise 2.0. that its policies, decisions, products, actions and transactions can be reliably reconstructed in context. Digital Archiving is a necessity for the Enterprise 2.0.: the reconstruction of the past depends on records and their meta data. Blogs, wikis, forums, etc., used for collaboration within the business processes of the organization, need to be documented for reconstruction in the future. Digital Archiving is a combination of three mechanisms: enterprise records management, organizational memory and records auditing. These mechanisms ensure that a digitized organization as the Enterprise 2.0. has a documented understanding of its past. In that way, it improves organizational accountability.
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