TY - JOUR
T1 - The Geographies of Community History Digital Archives in Rural Scotland
AU - Beel, David
AU - Wallace, Claire
AU - Webster, Gemma
AU - Nguyen, Hai
N1 - Acknowledgments
The research described here is supported by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub; award reference: EP/G066051/1. The CURIOS team would also like to thank Dr. Kim Ross for her essential proofreading however any mistakes held within this document are due to author error. We would also like to thank our continuing research partners for their time and support.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - The CURIOS (Cultural Repositories and Information Systems) project has been working with community heritage groups to co-produce sustainable solutions for the production of heritage archives in digital form. This process has produced an opportunity for fascinating geographical research into the ways in which community heritage groups produce history from their own perspective. This paper will therefore begin to open up these ongoing processes to consider, through case study examples, the ways in which the production of digital archives alters the geography of community heritage production. A number of community heritage groups have been converting their ‘analogue’ collections into ‘digital’ forms and the paper will argue how this significantly alters the positionality of the archive. This will be shown by detailing the ways in which the processes of collection and preservation, conducted by community volunteers, take place. The paper will then move to consider the ways in which this historical material, representative of place, is presented back to a wider audience. In doing this, it will discuss the rationales and processes involved in these practices and how this relates to broader themes of research within geography. Whether for historical research or for theoretical positioning, geographers have, on a number of levels, engaged with archives. Yet, the digital archive has seen little attention especially in terms of thinking through the ways in which digital mediums alter perceptions of space and place.
AB - The CURIOS (Cultural Repositories and Information Systems) project has been working with community heritage groups to co-produce sustainable solutions for the production of heritage archives in digital form. This process has produced an opportunity for fascinating geographical research into the ways in which community heritage groups produce history from their own perspective. This paper will therefore begin to open up these ongoing processes to consider, through case study examples, the ways in which the production of digital archives alters the geography of community heritage production. A number of community heritage groups have been converting their ‘analogue’ collections into ‘digital’ forms and the paper will argue how this significantly alters the positionality of the archive. This will be shown by detailing the ways in which the processes of collection and preservation, conducted by community volunteers, take place. The paper will then move to consider the ways in which this historical material, representative of place, is presented back to a wider audience. In doing this, it will discuss the rationales and processes involved in these practices and how this relates to broader themes of research within geography. Whether for historical research or for theoretical positioning, geographers have, on a number of levels, engaged with archives. Yet, the digital archive has seen little attention especially in terms of thinking through the ways in which digital mediums alter perceptions of space and place.
KW - archives
KW - digital heritage
KW - community
KW - value
KW - rescue archaeology
U2 - 10.1080/14702541.2014.980839
DO - 10.1080/14702541.2014.980839
M3 - Article
VL - 131
SP - 201
EP - 211
JO - Scottish Geographical Journal
JF - Scottish Geographical Journal
SN - 1470-2541
IS - 3-4
ER -