Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Working with record creators > The nature of personal digital archives
The nature of personal digital archives
Preparatory work: investigating the structure of the private archives of politicians
From the outset the Paradigm team were aware of the distinctive nature of personal archives and before addressing the challenges of digital preservation the project archivists felt it necessary to re-examine the nature and structure of private archives. The institutional experience of the Bodleian and the JRUL assisted the project in this matter; both libraries have collected the papers of politicians and other prominent individuals for many years.
Comparing existing holdings with records created by today's politicians
Naturally, Paradigm began by exploring existing holdings, identifying the record types found in these and thinking about how emerging technologies might have changed the creation, format and survival of such political records.
Looking at these records also helped to establish what roles, activities and relationships personal archives bear witness to, as these are important criteria when selecting records to preserve and appraising collections: functional appraisal, for example, involves looking at the functions carried out by the record creator, identifying the functions that merit documenting and selecting the records which best represent those functions, rather than starting with the records themselves.
As the project continued, experiences of working with contemporary record creators also contributed to Paradigm's understanding of personal archives.
The types of records traditionally found within the papers of an average politician include constituency and parliamentary correspondence, engagement diaries, political briefings, speeches, press releases, photographs, election material and personal correspondence. In a digital age the same series still exist, although technological advances may have changed the actual manner and format of their creation, use and storage.
Correspondence
Correspondence, personal and professional, is a key component of most personal archives. New methods of communication have resulted in the decline of letter-writing, but it is possible that mediums such as email and instant messaging could capture many exchanges which once took place via phone as well as by letter. Unsurprisingly, email is now a primary communication tool for many politicians and some of the private offices the project has worked with receive an average of 200 emails a day. One office has an email archive dating from 2003 which contains an overwhelming 70,000 emails. Paradigm's Academic Advisory Board considers email to be the digital record-type of most historical value, but researchers will need sophisticated navigation and discovery tools to manipulate an archive on this scale.
Engagement diaries
Engagement diaries, which contain so much valuable information, are now likely to be in the form of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), or even a MS Word file.
Documents and drafts
These include many kinds of papers, such as political briefings, speeches, press releases, internal publications, etc. Many personal archives at the Bodleian and the JRUL contain drafts of such papers as well as the final versions, although how many drafts individuals create and whether they keep them varies from one archive to another. Historians and curators are concerned that the use of word-processing software has resulted in the decline of the draft, which previously enabled researchers to trace the development of the writer's thoughts. Although it is possible to save versions of a digital document during the drafting process, many authors simply overwrite earlier versions or delete records of the drafting process.
Digital photographs
The advent of the digital camera has led to the accumulation of large quantities of digital images taken by individuals, many of which will have no analogue equivalent. Paradigm's experience is that most of these photographs have precious little contextual information, although contact with the creators and cross-referencing with engagement diaries could assist cataloguers in creating meaningful descriptive metadata. This is also true of photographs found in the traditional paper archives of politicians held by the Bodleian and JRUL which often lack basic descriptive information and require the cataloguer to undertake some detective work to place them in context. Some digital images may at least provide a definitive date of creation.
Personal websites and weblogs
Formats, such as websites and weblogs, do not have an obvious historical equivalent, but their role in politics is increasing dramatically. The 2005 general election saw many new candidates, as well as those defending seats, use a weblog as part of their campaign strategy. A growing number of politicians use blogs as a means of engaging with the electorate on day-to-day issues. The blog - a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links - is a curious mix of newspaper column, soapbox, diary entry and index to external items of interest. Such topical personal material is likely to have long-term historical interest and ranks highly as valuable historical material with the project's Academic Advisory Board. Institutions collecting personal archives should consider the websites and weblogs of those individuals as a component of their personal archives and seek to preserve them.
Digital audio and video
Archivists at specialist sound archives have preserved audio recordings of speeches for a number of years. It is likely that non-specialist repositories will increasingly accession personal collections holding significant amounts of audio recordings due to the explosion of new technologies and gadgetry such as the iPod and other MP3 players. Personal digital video is also likely to grow alongside the increasing popularity of web services for video material.
Election materials and press releases
Relevant materials are created in all the formats above. Election material, along with press releases, have been created for the public domain and they are examples of personal political records that can be opened shortly after they have been accessioned.
Newscuttings and scrapbooks
Many archives contain newscuttings and offprints. The digital equivalent of these could include the history of an individual's web-browsing, or a list of the websites bookmarked and RSS feeds subscribed to.
