Category: The National Archives

Reflections on the Research Resilience event

Archives, COVID-19, Events, HEAP, Innovation, Research Resilience, The National Archives

This post is written by Caroline Sampson, Development Manager: National and Networks, The National Archives.

The National Archives’ (TNA) Higher Education Archive Programme (HEAP) and History UK came together recently in a Research Resilience event to look at emerging practices to support academic research and researchers wishing to use archives.  While the disruption caused by the pandemic has clearly shone a spotlight on the barriers caused by service closures, restricted access and so forth, it is clear that some of these obstacles don’t surface solely during a global emergency, but can beleaguer the work of researchers on an everyday level too.

While it was great to hear the experiences of those who shared the work they have been doing over the last 18 months or so to try out creative new ways of facilitating research, it’s clear that this is part of an ongoing journey to explore exactly what barriers academic researchers experience and what opportunities there are to address these.  What the pandemic has done is raise awareness of the extent of the difficulties and provided a testbed for creative solutions.

Front cover of the Guide to Collaboration for Archives and Higher Education (2018)

To make real headway with this, it is vitally important to bring academics and archivists together so that each group can understand the needs and challenges that the other faces.  HEAP has attempted to do this in a variety of different ways but I’m left with a feeling that we have never quite managed to pull this off.  You might find it useful to have a look at the Guide to Collaboration for Archives and Higher Education that TNA and History UK co-created in 2018.

If archivists don’t have a good understanding of the problems researchers are experiencing and of the changes that they would like to see, their attempts to redesign workflows will fall short of what’s needed.  If researchers haven’t understood where the pinch points and constraints lie for archivists, they can’t use their voice to advocate for resources to bring about change.

So, a genuine call to arms!  How can we get these conversations really working and get the right people talking to each other?  If you have any thoughts, send them to me at caroline.sampson@nationalarchives.gov.uk

In the meantime, I thought it would be useful to share links to interesting resources and articles to read.

Digital Archive Learning Exchange (DALE)

The archivists amongst you might enjoy looking back at some of the events TNA’s DALE network have put on since the start of the pandemic.  DALE was set up to support archivists as they explore digital challenges, build capacity and improve digital skills across the sector.  Anyone is welcome to sign up for DALE events.

‘This time, it’s on the house’ – a webinar exploring how a range of services have continued to reach audiences during the pandemic

‘Strictly on the Download’ – digital preservation in action’: a webinar exploring how services are utilising digital preservation tools and resources to take next steps in delivering effective and high quality projects, and to think about the needs of a new generation of digital researchers.

‘Engage! Producing outstanding digital resources’ – The event included sessions on accessibility, demonstrating impact, developing online content for children, and running a remote volunteering project.

TNA blogs and articles

TNA has also shared a number of blogs that showcase different ways of working during the pandemic.  Not all relate to academic research but the learning and experimentation may well prove transferable and / or spark ideas for new models of service delivery.

Training and skills development

Many of you will be familiar with this already but why not check out the postgraduate archival skills training?

It really does feel as if we are on the cusp of bringing about one of those “once in a generation” shifts in how we redefine the interface between archives and research.  Over to you!  What should it look like?  How do we persuade decision-makers and funders to sign up?  What do we do next?

Research Resilience reflection 5: Research Resilience in Pandemic Times

COVID-19, Events, HEAP, Research Resilience, The National Archives

This post by Robert A. Ventresca (King’s University College at Western University, Canada) is the fifth in a series of reflections linked to the Research Resilience event organised by History UK and The National Archives’ Higher Education Archive Programme (HEAP). You can find out more about the panel discussion and networking event here.

The irony is not lost on me. I have struggled for the better part of an hour now to articulate a meaningful introduction to this very brief reflection on research resilience in pandemic times. Struggled, that is, with the distraction of my six-year-old daughter’s voice in another room engaging excitedly in an online learning exercise. Just as I finish typing these few sentences, in fact, she calls out that her lesson is finished, and that procuring her morning snack now is an urgent matter. Meanwhile, the dog, a precocious Labrador Retriever pup, is whimpering, the unmistakable signal that the appointed time fast approaches for her midday run around the yard. My wife, to her great credit, is somewhere in the house managing the many demands of her flourishing law practice, confronting the obstacles presented by our heavily taxed and falsely advertised high speed internet.

These are the rather quotidian concerns of working from home in pandemic times. Yet they speak to the very practical obstacles many of us are facing to produce meaningful research and scholarship in the midst of a global pandemic. As I write, the feared ‘third wave’ of Covid-19 has materialized where I live, provoking yet another round of closures and restrictions. The various public health measures are euphemistically described by officials as a shutdown, presumably to make it sound more palatable than the draconian lockdown of previous surges. One struggles in vain to tell the difference.

I write from a position of considerable privilege and security. I am a white, heterosexual male, tenured, and a Full Professor to boot. The reality is that the pandemic has impacted my junior colleagues disproportionately – especially women. In fact, as Vice President Kamala Harris wrote a few months ago, the social and economic effects of the pandemic have caused a mass exodus of women from the paid workforce – a situation she aptly describes as an emergency.

My privileged position gives rise to an ethical responsibility to lay bare how the effects of the global pandemic have disproportionately impacted traditionally under-represented groups in academia. At the same time, it may be instructive to reflect on how my own research agenda as a mid-career scholar has been impacted in wholly unexpected ways by the truly unprecedented demands of balancing work with caregiving responsibilities in pandemic times.

I would offer three observations.

First, we need to acknowledge that talking about the elusive work-life balance means something different today than it did in the before times. We are living in grievously disturbed times; a time of tremendous loss, suffering and disorienting disruption. Consider, for instance, what a stay-at-home or lockdown order entails. All so-called non-essential services and business are closed or severely restricted. Everyone who can work remotely must do so. Daycare, schools and even universities pivot to online learning, which is actually emergency remote teaching. Travel restrictions enforce strict regulations that prevent people from more than one household from congregating. Under current restrictions where we live, if even just one member of a household exhibits the altogether common symptoms of seasonal colds and flu, such as headache, cough or runny nose, the expectation is that everyone in the household should quarantine, including children. There are understandably rigourous protocols that dictate when children may be permitted to return to in-person instruction: Covid-testing, Covid-screening, isolation for days or weeks, depending on the circumstances.

Families must balance all of these variables when making work and caregiving arrangements. That balancing act – challenging enough in the before times – is all the more difficult now since the usual support networks we relied upon previously – daycares, babysitters, even extended family members – are prohibited or severely curtailed. Whatever fine distinction there was previously between work and home has been blurred, nay, erased altogether. As Kamala Harris put it: our homes have become classrooms and child-care centres. Accordingly, the assumptions, practices and expectations that informed research and scholarship previously should no longer apply; for if they do, we risk creating unfair, inequitable burdens and barriers in research fields across the disciplines.

Second, we must take care not to generalize or impose standardized metrics for evaluating research work during pandemic times. Flexibility and reasonable accommodations must be the order of the day. Not all researchers face the same dilemmas in balancing work and caregiving in pandemic times. Fair and equitable metrics presume differing circumstances and disparate access to resources and support systems. For me personally, the fact of having a young family in pandemic times when school-age children often are home for weeks on end and with a spouse who is also working from home – all of this was bound to change the way I work, if and when I am able to work at all. I have struggled to meet deadlines and missed a few. I have fallen behind at times in my contributions to an ongoing collaborative project. Travel restrictions have imposed indefinite delays on long-planned archival research, cutting me off from indispensable primary sources for my current book project.

Third, we need to redress structural and attitudinal inequities by demanding that institutions and their leaders commit to formal and informal accommodations to mitigate the most adverse effects of the pandemic on our research. All too often, managerial attitudes and organizational structures are slow to change. Such rigidity inhibits research resilience and productivity, not to mention the stresses and strains it places on mental health and well-being of researchers. I have advocated on my own behalf for formal accommodation in my work schedule on the basis of family status. I have insisted that those in a position of institutional authority take care not to bring gendered expectations to bear in determining accommodations for faculty and staff with caregiving responsibilities.

Again, I appreciate that this advocacy reflects a position of privilege and security. If I were not tenured, I would be worried about my professional trajectory. I know many of my more junior colleagues with young children or other caregiving roles are worried. We need to hold our institutions and our respective research networks accountable to ensure fair and equitable research practices in pandemic times.

Robert A. Ventresca, Ph.D.
Professor of History and Acting Coordinator, Human Rights Studies
King’s University College at Western University (Canada)

Research Resilience reflection 4: A year at the University of Glasgow’s Archives & Special Collections

Archives, COVID-19, Digital History, Events, HEAP, Research Resilience, The National Archives

This post by Moira Rankin and Robert Maclean (University of Glasgow) is the fourth in a series of reflections linked to the Research Resilience event organised by History UK and The National Archives’ Higher Education Archive Programme (HEAP). You can find out more about the panel discussion and networking event here.

A robust, future driven structure
The last year has been professionally challenging and rewarding for the Archives & Special Collections staff at the University of Glasgow. When the campus closed, our Team was already in the midst of change. A functional re-organisation had taken place in October 2019[1] to bring a ‘robust and “future driven structure”’ to meet the complex and ever-changing requirements of the 21st century academic community.[2] By March 2020 we were in the early stages of forming our team, scoping client needs, plotting trends and thinking creatively about interdisciplinary approaches to the collections.

On reflection that gave us a head start and we were able to put our online service ideas into practice far faster than we would ever have planned. Through lockdown we continually refocussed on what we could still do to keep research and teaching moving. A year on, the indications are that this approach has benefitted the University of Glasgow community.

Towards a post-custodial collaborative approach
In a recent podcast, scholar Karen Roybal commented on the limitations of custodial models of archival science. She spoke of the ways traditional methods have stifled some narratives and limited archivist professional development.[3] We were set in our ways so something had to change. The last year has changed the ways we communicate and collaborate – this is partly driven by the internal service change with archivists, conservators and librarians working closely together to offer a single point of contact collections teaching service.[4] But it is more than that – we are collaborating closely with our users to design the digital offer.

While it is too early to draw conclusions about the exact reasons for the change, what we can safely say is that during an uncertain budgetary environment, our management chose to invest over £30,000 in technology to support what we called the Virtual Collections Classroom (VCC) and the Virtual Reading Room (VRR). The conversations with academic colleagues that built these services gave us a shared focus and common student experience centred purpose. The break in the routine caused by the pandemic has enabled us to be creative about service delivery beyond our physical campus spaces.

New online services

Image shows a medieval manuscript on a Zoom screen, with a poll asking what section students want to zoom into next.
Close up of students viewing a medieval manuscript via the Virtual Collections Classroom. With permission of Dr Johanna Green and University of Glasgow Library Archives & Special Collections

We knew of visualiser set ups that had successfully been used by individual teachers and wanted to build something around that.[5] Our learning technology colleagues suggested we look at a ceiling mounted camera being used by anatomy lecturers in Dundee and St Andrews for over-the-shoulder teaching. With the input of academic colleagues,[6] in under 3 months we successfully made the business case for investment, installed the equipment, drew up conservation processes and user guides and turned it into a fully functioning bookable service.

Twenty-one visualiser classes were delivered to over 700 students from first year undergraduates right through to postgraduate researchers. User feedback from teachers and students was incredibly positive. Three of the teachers who used it received five nominations between them for teaching awards. Dr Johanna Green, whose strong support for the concept helped secure the required technological investment, won the award for Best Practice in Online Learning.

Visualisers and research

During the more open phases of lockdown the Virtual Reading Room service provided a form of access for those who were shielding and those who were studying or working away from Glasgow. Moreover it allowed academic teaching staff to save time (and stay safe) by limiting the number of visits to campus. They could do their teaching research from home. Finding ways to make teaching preparation more efficient has the potential to release more research time. This is something we will continue to investigate post-pandemic.

Image shows an archivist scanning a manuscript
An Engagement Team member sharing collections via the Virtual Reading Room. With permission of University of Glasgow Library Archives & Special Collection

Visualiser technology allows viewers to get a sense of scale, of materiality (through zooming in on physical features and studying condition and quality of materials), and a general sense of the “thingy-ness” of the object. Yet we are clear that this does not replicate a traditional research visit experience. It offers a quick flavour of the research object and the chance to confirm discrete and specific questions about it – such as, “yes, I’d like to have this digitised” or “no, I will not travel across the world to view it in person”. Careful management of user expectation of this new service continues to be important.

In a post-pandemic world visualiser-mediated access will be part of our service portfolio. Services might include:

  • A “try before you buy your plane ticket” service for distant researchers
  • A more inclusive service for anyone who cannot visit for reasons of disability or caring responsibilities
  • A conference call service allowing multiple researchers to consult items simultaneously over Zoom for project scoping and rapport building
  • Exciting but secure “reveals” for book launches
  • A high quality film studio environment for creating content for use in evidencing research findings and engaging audiences for enhanced impact

Resilient researchers of the future
We know there is strong demand for these services and we are still working through the post pandemic resource implications. Nevertheless we think that the most significant impact of this technology for research resilience may not be an immediate one.

Practical and logistical barriers have traditionally made it difficult to extend primary source teaching to the large undergraduate student cohorts. Postgraduate research students have sometimes reported archive anxiety and a lack of confidence in handling primary sources for the first time. Visualiser technology has enabled archive and rare book sources to go directly into an online first year class of Economic & Social Historians this year. They enthusiastically used the Zoom chat function to share their thoughts. Will the historians who started during the pandemic have a fresh perspective having seen their lecturers interacting with their source in real time? Will this inspire them to challenge and develop the subject in new ways? What previously hidden or marginalised perspectives might be revealed? Time will tell.[7]

References

  1. University of Glasgow – MyGlasgow – Archives & Special Collections – Our team. This paper covers the work that was led by the Engagement Team. It does not cover other future facing developments being led by other teams. The development of a new collections discovery interface is being led by Sarah Hepworth and the development of a Digital Preservation service by Clare Paterson.
  2. Restructuring for relevance: a paradigm shift for academic libraries | Emerald Insight
  3. Interview with Karen Roybal, 23rd February 2021 in Objectivity and Neutrality in the Archive, a podcast on Anchor
  4. The ASC Conservation & Preservation Team, led by Julie Gardham, have contributed enthusiastically to deliver this service professionally and securely.
  5. The work of Dot Porter at The University of Virginia and Aaron Pratt at the University of Texas at Austin influenced the creation of our visualiser services.
  6. We would particularly like to thank our colleagues Johanna Green, Hannah-Louise Clark, Maria Economou, Catriona MM Macdonald and Adele Redhead for their enthusiastic support of our work this year.
  7. Our next step is to assess and frame the potential of this creative and engaging online learning environment using the SCALE tool produced by Carmen Richardson and Punya Mishra. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.11.004

Research Resilience reflection 3: Supporting research with the Internet Archive

Archives, Digital History, Events, HEAP, Research Resilience, The National Archives

This video by Alison Harvey (Cardiff University) is the third in a series of reflections linked to the Research Resilience event organised by History UK and The National Archives’ Higher Education Archive Programme (HEAP). You can find out more about the panel discussion and networking event here.

Can’t see this video? You can find it directly on YouTube here.

If you’re interested in learning more about uploading to the Internet Archive, Alison Harvey has created a tutorial with a step-by-step guide. You can access it directly on SlideShare.

Research Resilience reflection 2: Resilience at Leeds University Library Special Collections

Archives, COVID-19, Digital History, Events, HEAP, Research Resilience, The National Archives, Uncategorized

This slideshow by Tim Procter (University of Leeds) is the second in a series of reflections linked to the Research Resilience event organised by History UK and The National Archives’ Higher Education Archive Programme (HEAP). You can find out more about the panel discussion and networking event here.

Having problems viewing these slides? You can also view them on the SlideShare website.

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