In May, the University of London Communications Office invited us to answer a few questions about ourselves for an Intranet article. We thought we’d reproduce some of our answers here, for the benefit of anyone else who wants a quick introduction to what we do (and ourselves, in case we forget).
ULCC Digital Archives & Repositories Team, May 2011
Please introduce yourself
We are ULCC’s Digital Archives & Repositories Team, and you can generally find us in the basement of Senate House along with the rest of ULCC. We are five:
- Ed Pinsent and Patricia Sleeman, our digital archivists, provide digital preservation training and consultancy.
- Rory McNicholl is our lead developer and repository systems manager.
- Silvia Arango-Docio is project officer for Web archiving projects and repository support.
- Richard Davis is team leader, and actively contributes to all of the team’s projects, as well as pursuing new and interesting opportunities.
What does your team do?
Our department was created in 1997 to develop the National Digital Archive of Datasets (NDAD), and operate it for The National Archives. NDAD was originally a joint project of ULCC and Senate House Libraries, providing a specialised cataloguing and preservation service for government databases.
Since then we’ve worked on many digital archive and library projects. The NDAD service ceased in 2010, but we continue working on innovative projects for born-digital and digitised records, developing repositories and related information systems for education and research. We provide specialist training and consultancy for the HE and cultural heritage sectors through the highly-acclaimed Digital Preservation Training Programme (DPTP).
Our current or recent partners and customers include most of the University’s colleges and institutes, the British Library, the Parliamentary Archives, the JISC, the UK Web Archiving Consortium, and the European Commission. We work closely with the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), and local groups such as the AIM25 archives network and theSHERPA-LEAP consortium of University of London repository managers.
Tell us one thing about your work that colleagues might not know.
Digital preservation issues might seem esoteric, but they are fundamental to every electronic and computer-based activity – in other words, pretty much everything in business, education and research. Understanding the best ways to manage, describe and preserve all our electronic information – from a single email, to complex Web sites, or collections of digital photos or videos – is an essential 21st century skill.
What aspect of your work gives you the most satisfaction?
We are very lucky to work closely with information professionals from around the UK and internationally. Patricia has recently delivered preservation workshops at the National Library of Jordan; Ed and Silvia are working on Web archiving projects for the JISC and the EU; Richard and Rory won the annual JISC Developer Challenge at last year’s Open Repositories conference in Madrid.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
Keeping up-to-date with constantly changing ICT landscape in education, libraries and archives. Electronic information systems evolve continually, as do the tools and methods for managing them. Luckily there is a wealth of current information on the Web, if you know where to look! We actively share our thoughts and experiences through our long-running Digital Archives Blog and on Twitter.
Name one thing that would make your working environment better.
Sometimes it seems we work with everyone except colleagues in Senate House! It would be great to work more with colleagues at the Central University, and bring more of our accumulated experience to bear on some of the University’s information and records management challenges.
If you could meet anyone (dead or alive) who would it be and why?
We’re not going to agree on this any time soon. Suggestions so far include Sofia Loren, Hypatia of Alexandria, Richard Brautigan and Pete Townshend.
Name three hobbies team members pursue – the more unusual the better.
Most of us have small children, so hobbies take a back seat. Ed is an accomplished artist, writer, broadcaster, musician and samizdat publisher. Patricia is about to learn how to stain glass before starting Arabic lessons for the third time.
If, as a group, you stormed the musical charts, what genre of music would that be in, what would be your stage name and who would be your lead vocalist?
We could be a psychedelic beat group called the Dates Of Creation. Our lead singer would have to be Patricia.
