Post Colin, Chassanoff Alexandra
Department of Library and Information Science, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC USA.
School of Library and Information Sciences, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC USA.
Arch Sci (Dordr). 2021;21(4):413-432. doi: 10.1007/s10502-021-09365-0. Epub 2021 Jun 14.
The documentation of archival workflows plays an important role in digital curation practice. Capturing the various steps, tools, people, and software involved at different stages, workflow documentation visually represents complex activities, and at times, invisible labor. In this article, we reflect on findings from the OSSArcFlow project, a three-year, grant-funded initiative to investigate and document workflow activities of 12 cultural heritage institutions using three open-source software systems. Building on previously published research on documentation of current digital curation practices, this article reflects on the challenges the project team encountered in modeling archivists' aspirations for their workflows. While current practices could be accurately represented in linear process models, archivists' aspirations for how they might advance digital curation practices extended beyond adding or changing discrete workflow steps and often involved sociotechnical factors that could not be easily mapped. This article presents a taxonomy of archivists' aspirations for their born-digital archives, grouping these goals together around major themes that emerged throughout the research. Our findings show that workflow documentation is an essential artifact in helping archivists to understand gaps and challenges in their current workflows and to imagine the further development of digital curation tools, systems, and practices. Project participants especially benefited from engaging in this reflection on workflow documentation as part of a community of practitioners, with the opportunity to compare across institutional contexts.
档案工作流程的记录在数字保存实践中发挥着重要作用。工作流程记录捕捉了不同阶段涉及的各种步骤、工具、人员和软件，直观地呈现了复杂的活动，有时还包括无形的劳动。在本文中，我们反思了OSSArcFlow项目的研究结果，该项目是一项为期三年、由资助的倡议，旨在使用三个开源软件系统调查和记录12个文化遗产机构的工作流程活动。在之前发表的关于当前数字保存实践记录的研究基础上，本文反思了项目团队在为档案工作者的工作流程建模时所遇到的挑战。虽然当前的实践可以在线性过程模型中得到准确体现，但档案工作者对如何推进数字保存实践的期望超出了增加或改变离散的工作流程步骤，并且往往涉及难以映射的社会技术因素。本文提出了档案工作者对其原生数字档案的期望分类法，围绕整个研究中出现的主要主题将这些目标归为一组。我们的研究结果表明，工作流程记录是帮助档案工作者理解其当前工作流程中的差距和挑战，并设想数字保存工具、系统和实践的进一步发展的重要工件。项目参与者尤其受益于作为从业者社区的一部分参与对工作流程记录的这种反思，并有机会在不同机构背景下进行比较。
