The Pararchive Project

An OpenGLAM institution champions these principles Release digital information about the artefacts (metadata) into the public domain using an appropriate legal tool such as the Creative Commons Zero Waiver. Keep digital representations of works for which copyright has expired (public domain) in the public domain by not adding new rights to them. When publishing data…

“…the big idea here is that open collections allow cultural institutions to complete their educational missions: not only showing our objects to as many people as possible, but giving people ownership of our collections and spaces by welcoming them to engage in any way they can dream up.” More at… blog.mam.org/2014/11/11/beyond-digital-open-collections-and-cultural-institutions-part-1 blog.mam.org/2014/11/18/beyond-digital-open-collections-and-cultural-institutions-part-2

We have always had the notion of Pararchive stories inhabiting a tapestry of connected tales – with characters, places, objects, institutions and times as their connective threads. With the notion of serendipity at the core of our design philosophy, our hope was that these threads would allow new narrative patterns, paths and perspectives to emerge both organically and explicitly. Lately I’ve…

You could argue that “designing with the user” is a sensible approach – it’s certainly better than designing without them – but is it taking us closer to an end-game of “people in the developing world solving their own problems”? It may if you’re working with them to build a tool or platform which they,…

Twitter founder Ev Williams gave a talk in 2013 in which he explained that he saw the internet as “a machine to give people what they want” and identified the two keys to success as being speed and cognitive ease. This isn’t new. Steve Krug in his seminal work Don’t Make Me Think (2000) covered…

  Pararchive won a small grant to participate in this year’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science which took place from 1st – 8th November. The aim of the Festival was to showcase some of the “leading” social science research being undertaken across the country and to demonstrate how such work…

It has been a fascinating 12 months working on the Pararchive project so far. Working with our community groups in Stoke, Bute and Manchester, and co-designing a digital service that will suit their needs, has been a privilege – with the ultimate outcome being something that will allow people of varying technical competency to share…

The reality is that much of our digital history is in the hands of companies that could disappear tomorrow. If archivists are blocked as they were here, can we expect a company like Twitter to keep those artifacts alive every time one of these services is threatened? And should we even want that to happen?…

…a reminder that the mundanities of our world can become relics. That the things we manufacture for short-term benefit, the objects we may consider disposable, unimportant—well, these objects will probably outlive us. We don’t get to control what lasts, or how the future will interpret our ruins. Archaeologists learn a great deal from ancient garbage.…