2nd Panel Report

Digital Lives Research

The second panel looked at Digital Lives Research, and focused on the work of the British Library in the curation of information in the digital age. The panellists, all from the British Library,were Neil Beagrie, Rob Perks, Alison Hill and Jeremy John.

Neil Beagrie opened the session with a brief overview on the function of the British Library. He commented that the library's "memory" is mainly reflective and is maintained for the purposes of research so that it may be of use in future. He identified the library's goals, which include research into the management of long-term data and access management.

Robert Perks, of the Library's sound archive gave a presentation describing his position within the library, and the work in which he has been involved. He specifically mentioned the Memory Bank project, run in conjunction with the BBC. This is a large-scale project in which ordinary people were interviewed and recordings taken. These recordings where then stored in the Library's archives. During these interviews, props such as diaries are discouraged in order to get a clear picture from the subject's memory, by understanding their context. The interviewer was also an important aspect, as different interviewers are likely to ask different questions, which may give a completely different interpretation of the same person.

Alison Hill (download PowerPoint slides) then gave a presentation on archiving the web. Hill's job is to archive web sites manually, and make them available for all to view. Unlike other web archiving services, the process is entirely manual and permission is sought before the site is archived. Currently, 1,500 sites have been archived, but when asked only one in six web site owners give their permission for their sites to be archived. She went on to describe how sites change over time, and how different events spark great change in the web. For example, each person in the UK has a different experience of the London Bombings, and many of them write blogs. By collating the blogs, web-based autobiographical data, it is possible to build a much bigger picture. Additionally, events such as celebrity deaths tend to create a surge of memorabilia being sold on eBay.

Jeremy John spoke about computer forensics. He briefly explained the process of extracting data from a computer without disturbing it, and commented on the philosophy of data acquisition, specifically if the creator of a file dies, who owns it?

Rob Perks then added some comments on old hardware. For example, if a file is stored on an 8-inch floppy disk, there are very few working PCs today capable of reading the data. Copying the file to a more recent medium taints the data as it is no longer on its original medium, and if the medium is not digital in the first place it needs to be digitised before it can be stored digitally. He also commented on backups, and the fact that many people still do not back up their data despite being told to do so.

Questions:

In the question session, Kieron O'Hara pointed out that the panellists are all from the British Library, yet the web is global, and asked them how the 'British' web is defined. This was answered by Alison Hill, who agreed but suggested that the legal situation was the biggest challenge in this area, as British law is not the same as the law in other countries. Abigail Sellen asked when someone passes away, who decides what is worth keeping and what is not. Jeremy replied that this is the job of a curator, and likened it to detective work. Neil added that authenticity is also a problem in this domain, the usefulness of computer forensics was then emphasised by Jeremy.

Finally, Rob was asked how he chooses his sample. He replied that he would like to interview every person in the UK, but this is not feasible. He gave an example of a selection process for a project he once ran on the Post Office, and how he made certain to select different people with a range of circumstances.