The training of archivists: contents, models, players, perspectives

Not just papers: the archive as an expression of the variety of cultural heritage

The archive is not just paper. There are many archives in which it is necessary to compare matters, materials and objects that are very different from traditional ones, such as to require a specialized approach and sometimes original solutions. It is therefore appropriate to reflect on the way in which traditional descriptive models are adequate to represent such realities, in which the archive document takes on such varied forms.

To discuss about this theme, Giorgetta Bonfiglio Dosio will present the complexity and variety of company archives; Danilo Craveia will focus in particular on the archives of the textile industry; Simona Turco will tackle the theme of photographic archives; Maria Francesca Stamuli will explore the documentary landscape linked to oral sources; and Manuel Rossi will tell us about the archives of the show business. Giovanni Michetti will moderate.

Digital libraries: a training ground for the hybridization of disciplines and contents

Cultural heritage is a real system, in which objects live in relationships not only with other objects, but also with subjects, with places, with processes of production, use and conservation: in a word, with the context within which they are immersed. How adequate are the traditional disciplinary and professional divisions, which then translate into organizational-institutional divisions, to represent the complexity of the ecosystem of cultural heritage? Digital libraries highlight the systemic nature of cultural heritage and therefore seem an adequate tool for questioning traditional models and acting as catalysts of innovation processes with respect to current structures.

The directors of the central institutes will discuss this theme: Laura Moro (Central Institute for the Digitization of Cultural Heritage), Carlo Birrozzi (Central Institute for Catalog and Documentation), Elisabetta Reale (Central Institute for Archives), Simonetta Buttò (Central Institute for the Single Catalog). Giovanni Michetti will moderate.

Process certification: a quality model

In 2017, the legislator introduced process certification in the Digital Administration Code, with the aim of facilitating the transformation of an analog document into a digital document.

Annex 3 to the “Guidelines on the training, management and storage of IT documents”, published in 2020, summarizes this process, specifying some of its most important characteristics.

However, the need to “ensure the correspondence of the form and content of the original and the copy” requires extreme attention in order to prevent massive dematerialization operations from producing inadequate results. To this end, the Directorate General for Archives has prepared a detailed model to achieve process certification according to quality and systematic criteria, with the aim of providing a tool to support the dematerialization procedures of public bodies.

Speakers Sabrina Mingarelli (Directorate General Archives, Service II), Giovanni Michetti (Sapienza University of Rome), Gabriele Capone (Archival and Bibliographic Superintendency of Campania), Antonino Mazzeo (University of Naples Federico II), Patrizia Gentili (Agency for Italy digital). Coordinated by Stefano Pigliapoco (University of Macerata).

What does AI look like when archival concepts and principles inform its development?

In the past, archives have used Artificial Intelligence relying on off-the-shelf tools. This practice has both limited what challenges can be met and made the needs of archives subservient to the larger field of machine learning. It may be a practical thing to do, but many alarming instances of bias have been found in modern machine learning models as applied to archival material. This raises the questions of a) whether off the shelf tools are the best solution for the archival field, b) how archival concepts and principles might influence the development of AI tools intended for records and archives management, and c) how the two fields of AI and archival science can benefit from a partnership.

The speakers will discuss the archival design, development, and leveraging of AI to support the ongoing availability and accessibility of trustworthy records. We will first explain the types of AI that are most likely to support archival endeavours, and then illustrate studies on the design of AI tools for the identification of ancient records, for the classification of current records, and for detection of privacy information, as well as presenting several other studies focused on using and developing AI to support archival appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation, and access.

This theme will be discussed by Luciana Duranti (University of British Columbia, Canada), Muhammad Abdul-Mageed (University of British Columbia, Canada), Luigi Compagnoni (State Archives in Milan, Italy), Emanuele Frontoni (University of Macerata, Italy), Umi Mokhtar (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia), and Jim Suderman (Expert, Canada). The session will be moderated by Luciana Duranti.

How much is a file worth? The economic value of the archives

The economic value of archives is a topic of fundamental importance for understanding the role of archives not only as a patrimonial asset, but also as a strategic component for the production of cultural, social and managerial value that can ultimately be traced back to an economic value.

The Italian legislator has established that archives and libraries are fully part of the state patrimony and as such must be subject to economic evaluation.

The accounting activity has the merit of having forced the administrations to identify and quantify their documentary assets, but also highlighted the inadequacy of the accounting criteria established by law.

For this reason it is necessary to think about new models and new formulas that make it possible to more accurately identify the value of cultural heritage, thereby indirectly contributing to supporting activities aimed at guaranteeing the protection and conservation of documentary heritages.

Speakers: Sabrina Mingarelli (DGA, Head of Servizio II), Debora Chiarelli (Sapienza University of Rome), Fabio Giulio Grandis and Lucia Biondi (Roma Tre University), Alessandra Federici (ISTAT), Chiara Faggiolani (Sapienza University of Rome) will discuss this topic. Moderator: Giovanni Michetti (Sapienza University of Rome).

How is blockchain technology transforming archives and records?

Distributed ledger technologies (DLT), including blockchains, combine the use of cryptography and distributed networks to achieve a novel form of records creation and keeping designed for tamper-resistance and immutability. Over the past several years, these capabilities have made blockchains increasingly popular as a general-purpose technology for use in recordkeeping in a variety of sectors and industry domains, and led to experimentation in its use by archives and other organizations for the safeguarding and preservation of records. Even more recently, some cultural heritage institutions have begun to produce Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTS), cryptographic digital assets that can be traded over blockchain networks, as new marketing tools, while some cultural institutions have incorporated these new crypto-assets into their collections. Yet many open challenges and issues, both theoretical and applied, remain in connection with these novel technologies.

The speakers in this panel will discuss examples of how blockchain technology is transforming archives and records, from the creation of new forms of cryptographic certification and health records, to safeguarding evidence of human rights violations and claims of displaced people to their homes, lands and property, to novel NFTs that may one day end up in archival institutions and have to be preserved. They will reflect on lessons learned from their involvement in blockchain projects and upon the implications of novel distributed ledger technologies for records management, archival appraisal and acquisition, arrangement and description, outreach and public programming, and society as a whole.

Archangel project for Archives

Blockchain tecnology applied to Archives 

This theme will be discussed by Hrvoje Stancic (University of Zagreb, Croatia ), Anne Gilliland (UCLA, United States), Jesse McKee (221A, Canada) and Victoria Lemieux (University of British Columbia, Canada). The session will be moderated by Hrvoje Stancic.

Linked Open Data for cultural heritage

Linked Open Data (LOD) are one of the most important resources for sharing and growing knowledge through the potentially infinite creation of new connections between resources. For this reason, LODs are the basis for the development of platforms for the management and description of cultural heritage of a heterogeneous nature, within environments capable of containing and governing variety.

However, the undeniable advantages of LODs pose new problems and new doubts: how is it possible to merge the specialist approaches of the various communities that make up the GLAM reality within a single shared framework? what are the specific critical issues for the archival field? what is the impact of Linked Data on consolidated concepts and methods in our disciplines?

Speakers:

Chiara Veninata (Central Institute for Catalog and Documentation), Fabiana Guernaccini (Regesta.exe), Francesca Tomasi (University of Bologna), Federico Carbone (University of  Salerno), Silvia Mazzini (Almawave) and Daniele Del Pinto (Almawave). Moderated by Giovanni Michetti (Sapienza University of Rome).

The building archives in the era of digital transition

The archives of contemporary architecture, engineering and design studios constitute an irreplaceable source of knowledge of a relevant sector of Italian technical-scientific creativity.
So far, great attention has been paid to the recovery of paper archives of great personalities and architects of the past, which in many cases have been digitized and have made it possible to get to know and study the most important professionals of the twentieth century.

However, still little attention has been paid to safeguarding the archival heritage produced in recent decades in contemporary architectural studios, where sketches, drawings, projects, photographs and three-dimensional models on traditional analog supports have gradually replaced the their digital equivalents:
project documents, photographs, animations, videos, renderings are produced in electronic format and have almost totally supplanted traditional documentary types.

The activities of production, management and conservation of digital documents oblige architects, but also protection bodies and civil society, attentive to the protection of memory, to face new and different challenges compared to the past: digital documents require adequate conservation strategies and performing, which start from the moment of their creation. The webinar intends to reflect on these issues while simultaneously presenting the activities of the working group on architecture archives set up within ANAI.

Speakers: Stefano Allegrezza (University of Bologna), Giorgetta Bonfiglio-Dosio (Ca’ Foscari – Venice University; ANAI), Chiara Quaranta (Professional), Lucia Bosso (Based Architecture), Riccardo Domenichini (IUAV), Anna Moreno (iBIMi). Moderator: Micaela Procaccia (ANAI President)

Presentation of the IHRA Guidelines for Identifying Relevant Documentation for Holocaust Research, Education and Remembrance

For decades, a significant amount of the documentation bearing on the Holocaust and its historical context has been scattered, endangered, and in many cases made inaccessible.
In Italy, for a long time, the office in the Ministry of Interiors opposed to free access to documents concerning individual position of Jews in the file of the Demorazza in the Archivio centrale dello Stato e of Prefettura e Questura in the local State Archives because of their “sensitive” content.

Only in 1996, during the First National Conference of Archives, in accordance with the Union of Jewish Communities, this obstacle was cancelled.

Open access means allowing researchers and the public the ability to find and use Holocaust related documentation for commemoration, education, and research. Open access does not precede privacy regulations but encourages archives to implement these prudently where Holocaust documentation is concerned.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “Archival Access Project” sought to map the status of accessibility to Holocaust period
documentation and the challenges faced by researchers. The project also contributed to ensuring that a specific exception for documents bearing on totalitarian regimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, such as the Holocaust was included in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Recital 158.

However, there is a discussion about what kind of documents can be considered Holocaust- related (and, as a consequence, an example of what kind of documents can be considered related to totalitarian regimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and so on).

The IHRA working group “Monitoring Access to Holocaust Collections tried to overcome one of the obstacles: the lack of practical guidelines for identifying relevant documentation for Holocaust research, remembrance and education, thus allowing each archive and each state to adopt a different approach while determining access to their documentation.

These Guidelines will be presented by Elinor Kroitoru the researcher who supported the Project Working Group.
They will discussed together with dr. Sabrina Mingarelli (Direzione generale Archivi) and Laura Brazzo (CDEC, Milan) who will also talk about Italian and European Projects to allow open access to Holocaust documentation.
The discussion will be moderated by Micaela Procaccia (President of ANAI and member of the Working Group).

Digital preservation of archives: experiences and transfer projects

For at least twenty years, digital preservation has been at the center of the initiatives of the Italian legislator, but it is also the subject of standardization interventions at international and European level. In the last decade, custody services have been developed in many countries that comply with regulatory provisions and consistent with the reference standards, in particular with the ISO 14721 (OAIS) standard.

Among the activities and requirements considered critical, a significant weight is recognized to the quality of the payments of archival documents in the storage deposit. It is on this aspect that the digital talk focuses, with the aim of illustrating the most significant requirements and the most critical issues, comparing some concrete experiences: those carried out in Italy by the Emilia-Romagna Regional Archival Center (ParER), presented by Gabriele Bezzi, and in Europe by the Historical Archives of the European Union, which will be discussed by Samir Musa. Silvia Trani is entrusted with the task of describing the project dedicated to payments to the digital deposit of the Central State Archives. Introduces and moderates Mariella Guercio.