Digital Lives, iCuration and Archives in the Wild

The OeRC is pleased to welcome Dr Jeremy Leighton John from The British Library,  to present a seminar entitled Digital Lives, iCuration and Archives in the Wild on Tuesday 19 May 2009

This seminar is open to all and will start at 2pm in the OeRC Access Grid Room (room 277 - access available via 7 Keble Road).

This seminar may be broadcast with permission via video-link to other e-Research South venues. Only the speaker will be visible from other locations. Recording of this seminar is prohibited.

As people lead increasingly digital lives, vast quantities of word documents, PDFs, digital photos and audio and video recordings and the like are being created, acquired and shared. What is to be the fate of these Personal Digital Objects (or eMANUSCRIPTS)? What steps might help to safeguard their capture and long term preservation and use? The Digital Lives Research Project is conducting some initial research into the behaviour of creators, the expectations of researchers and other users, and the perceptions of curators and archivists; and is exploring various approaches, processes and technologies for securing and making available in the future the personal digital archives of both academics and members of the digital public. This seminar will briefly outline some of the research. 

Dr Jeremy Leighton John has been working since 2000 with personal digital archives at the British Library, and was appointed as its first Curator of eMANUSCRIPTS in 2003. He is responsible for the Digital Manuscripts Project. This is a project that has been developing procedures for the capture, holding and access of eMSS: pioneering, for example, the use of authenticating forensic processes as well as exploring perspectives and practices of enhanced and proactive curation and future access. He is interested in the adoption of web 2.0, usability and evolutionary techniques and perspectives in this research and development. He holds a DPhil degree from Merton College, University of Oxford, and is the Principal Investigator of the Digital Lives Research Project.

The Digital Lives Research Project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and is being led by the British Library in partnership with the Department of Information Studies at University College London and the Centre for Information Technology Law at the University of Bristol.