Archival Liveness: Designing with Collections Before and During Cataloguing and Digitization

Tom Schofield; David Kirk; Telmo Amaral; Marian Dork; Mitchell Whitelaw; Guy Schofield; Thomas Ploetz

doi:dhq/vol/9/3/000227/000227.html

Archival Liveness: Designing with Collections Before and During Cataloguing and Digitization

Tom Schofield, David Kirk, Telmo Amaral, Marian Dork, Mitchell Whitelaw, Guy Schofield, Thomas Ploetz

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

We present "archival liveness" as a concept in design and the Digital Humanities and describe its development within a Research Through Design process. Working with a newly acquired archive of contemporary poetry we produced designs that both manifested and "geared in to" [Durrant 2011] [Gurwitsch 1979] the temporal rhythms of the work and infrastructure of archiving. Drawing on user-centred work with participants, often poets themselves, we focused on marginalia as a material feature of the archive, developing a drawing machine and live Twitter bot. Our work addresses institutional concerns for outreach and engagement while also acknowledging and exploiting the inevitably incomplete or live character of archival collections. For designers working with digital archives, we demonstrate the pragmatic and critical value of liveness as a focus of the design process.

Original language	English
Journal	Digital Humanities Quarterly
Volume	9
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/dhq/vol/9/3/000227/000227.html
Publication status	Published - 2015

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AU - Whitelaw, Mitchell

AU - Schofield, Guy

AU - Ploetz, Thomas

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Archival Liveness: Designing with Collections Before and During Cataloguing and Digitization

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