Archiving Aggregates of Individually Created Digital Content: Lessons from Archiving the Occupy Movement

Abstract

Abstract With the ubiquity of digital phones and cameras, our memory institutions will need to ingest an increasingly large number of born-digital media, much of it coming from personal archives. The high volume of this material will force collections to find smart ways to automate appraisal/selection, metadata assignment, and standardization of formats, or to convince contributors to do so. This article reports on ideas and methods developed by the group Activist Archivists to automate selection, metadata collection, and standardization of the born-digital media documenting the Occupy movement. Techniques include employing automatic time/date/location stamping, analyzing social media sites, producing guidelines for contributors, and asking for community involvement in selecting the material perceived as having the most enduring value.

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