The Effect of Digitization and preservation on Archiving Profession

Question 5
The decrease in funding for libraries and archives is a result of the decrease in the appreciation of the work that is done by these institutions. The archival profession must affirm their significance in keeping records for the public. This can be done by selective archiving. Archiving any form of information makes many potential financiers to view the profession as a simple storage option. If they focus on storing value information, people will be able to recognize their significance and justify the need for financing their activities.
The collapse of the archival profession is a threat to the archival professionals. Advocacy is one of the methods they can apply to promote their profession. These professionals must be vocal about the practices involved in their profession and their benefits. Most people view the archival profession from a literal perspective, as a practice that deals with the storage of old documents and information. If the professionals advocate for the profession, many people will gain a sense of enlightenment regarding the actual role played by profession in the society. The professionals must also exhibit determination towards the profession. Complaining and relenting only enhances the negative view of the profession among ordinary members of the public.
The media can play a significant role in enlightening the public about the significance of professional archivists. The media should advertise archival practices its value of help different sectors of the society such as education and knowledge dispensation. The significance of archival professionals can also be publicized through exhibitions and campaigns carried out by the professional archivists and other related stakeholders. This will enable more people to have access to information about the actual role of these professionals.
Question 6
Digitization is a contemporary trend in the archival profession. It is mainly used for the preservation of archival materials. Digitization can have either negative or positive impact on the archival information. Digitization helps to preserve significant quantities of information in a smaller space. Computers and other memory chips can hold a lot of information on a smaller space compared to physical preservation methods. Digitization also enables quick access to preserved information. It provides search options, where individuals can search the specific content of their interest. This is a major improvement from the traditional physical preservation methods, where individuals could manually search all the files in the archives. Conversely, digitization exposes the archival information to threats of alteration and unauthorized access. External parties with adequate knowledge can hack the digital systems and gain access to the archival information without authorization.
Apparently, digitization is an effective preservation medium. Digitization enables information to be viewed in the future after it is recorded. Digitization also offers many methods of preservation. It has the capacity to protect the information from distortion. Digitization avails advanced protection measures for archival information. By using firewalls and passwords only, the authorized individuals can have access to digitized archival information. Seemingly, digitization does not alter the nature of documents in which the information is recorded. For instance, text data can be scanned and stored in digital files without any alterations. Digitization of archival data also makes the information accessible from any location. Digitized information can be accessed through the databases of the archival institutions. This makes digitization a more improved version of the traditional archival preservation methods.
Question 7
Many issues within the archival profession need to be addressed. One of the issues is education. Clearly, the archival profession is slowly losing popularity and education within the archival profession must only focus on specific important areas. The professionals must assess the concepts, such as advocacy, which can be used to revive the profession. The education curriculum for the archival professionals must be restructured to cover only important concepts. Overall, it would help the professionals to realize their primary roles and focus on delivering quality in their practice.
The issue of assessment must also be addressed within the profession. Possibly, the drop in the popularity of the archival profession because of the inadequate evaluation. The poor evaluation could have resulted in laxity among the archival professionals. Strict assessment of the practices within the archival profession would enable the professionals to focus on delivering quality within their scope of practice. This can be achieved through the formulation of oversight committees and commissions. These commissions should perform a regular assessment of the practices of these institutions, and rate the accountability of the archival professionals. It is also appropriate to address the actual role of the archives in the society. Apparently, most people perceive archives as places where old information is kept although the information in the archives is just old and insignificant. Affirming the role of the archives would help people to get a sense of purpose for the existence of the archives. This can help to revitalize the interest of people to use the archives for different purposes.
Response to Classmate’s Discussion
The classmate’s discussion focuses on the diminishing effectiveness of the national archives. I agree that people might not be able to perceive the importance of the national archives in the future. In essence, it has lessened its position on the collection of archives. The classmate highlights the failure of the archives to collect all the administrative information from the Whitehouse for storage. Therefore, people who will look for this information in the future might not have access. The national archives must reinforce their purpose through all the available ethical and legal measures to ensure that they obtain the relevant information for storage.
The classmate also addresses the challenges faced by the national archives in their endeavor to obtain the information. According to Dawsey and Bender (2017), the Whitehouse does not follow the available protocols of handing over the information for storage. Apparently, the Whitehouse does not hand over some of the encrypted apps and the text messages sent to members of the administration. Regulations for the collection of this information were enhanced making it imperative for the administration to hand over tweets sent from the administration for storage. This was done in appreciation of the increased use of social media technology within the Whitehouse. The classmate expresses his concerns as both an archivist and a historian. This depicts how these compromises in the archival profession can have a vast scope of impacts. People from other disciplines would require access to archival information for reference and other purposes. The classmate’s response indicates the significance of the archival profession and practices within the profession. It also reflects on the contributions of the community towards the success and the decline of the archival profession. He depicts that even the other members of the community and other systems have a role to play in ensuring that archiving is beneficial to the society.


Reference
Archival Appraisal and Acquisition. LECTURE NOTES
Archival Arrangement and Description. LECTURE NOTES
Archival Outreach and Engagement. Lecture Notes
Archival Use and Users. LECTURE NOTES
Dawsey, J. & Bender, B. (2017). National Archives warned Trump White House to preserve documents. The POLITICO
Introduction to Archives, Archival Theory, and the Archival Profession. LECTURE NOTES
What is Archival Arrangement? LECTURE NOTES