On Wednesday, February 10, 2021, I gave a talk for a Bentley Historical Library Staff Meeting. This is an adaptation of the talk.

Making Your Tools Work for You

I wrote a book!

SAA summarizes it like this: “Weaving together both theory and reflective practice, Making Your Tools Work for You gives an overview of the what, why, and how of systems integration for digital archives and libraries. With plentiful examples from his own work at the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library as well as others’ work in the field, Eckard outlines how to design an integrated technical ecosystem, implement a systems integration project, support data and metadata on the move, and create efficient workflows from accession to ingest to access.”

What motivated you to write this book?

I feel like archivists (and others) these days live in a very dynamic, complex kind of “vortex.” It’s increasingly more complicated to do even the most basic work of archives, in part because there are so many layers to what we do. There’s the stuff itself, whether born-digital or physical content (which can get pretty complicated in and of itself), surrogates of that stuff in the form of digitization efforts, metadata that we create or that might be inherent to the “stuff” when it’s born-digital, and the technology that supports all this and the systems that house all of this.

It’s the last part that seems to be relatively new, at least to me. Archives have been dealing with the stuff itself and the metadata about it for a long time, and even with the advent of “the digital,” conceptually, at least, I think we understand what we’re doing. But the systems part–actually the “ecosystem” part because we’re only able to do what we do now because we manage many, many systems that all specialize in one thing or another but “work together” to support the archival enterprise–that part is new.

And, of course, this vortex is itself already caught up in another kind of dynamic, complex vortex of people and organizations. Just as an example, to do what we need to do on Curation, we need to consider the needs of all kinds of people: archivists here (and not just those from Curation), others here who aren’t archivists, and administrators like Terry and Angela, even U-M administrators outside of the Bentley. We may need to work with other librarians or archivists on campus, or partner with systems developers and system administrators at U-M Library, technologists at ITS, or with the vendors we use. We need to know what other archivists in the profession are doing. And, of course, we can’t forget about the faculty, students, and researchers we serve and their needs and expectations (and it’s not like all those researchers first neatly into some nice researcher “box” either).

So, this stuff is hard. And, as best I can tell, no one tells you how to do it, in part because we’re still figuring it out. I certainly didn’t learn about this in school or anything like that. And when people do try to tell you about technology (and I count myself among these people), it can sometimes feel very reductionist (e.g., this is the way a database works, here’s how to use Python and the ArchivesSpace API to do x, y, or z, etc.). They can seem to forget the bigger picture of why we’re doing what we’re doing.

So, this book–and a similar course I teach for SAA and an initiative I’ve engaged with professionally over the last couple of years called “Lighting the Way”–these are not so much a “how to” manuals because I don’t think we’re necessarily far enough along for that, here at the Bentley or anywhere else. They are more a guidebook: a “here’s some things that I’ve learned along the way, here’s some things that others have learned” kind of thing… many times the “hard way” by trial and error.

And actually that whole approach that acknowledges right from the start that actually we don’t have all this figured out is important to me, and it is reflected in the preface where I wrote that:

What I have attempted to write here is simply an introduction, an overview… This book is by no means definitive or exhaustive and, knowing that I haven’t been able to anticipate every eventuality from the start, I think it’s best if we all treat this whole endeavor as somewhat provisional.

Who’s the book for? How much does one have to know about technology to understand it? Does one have to work in a well-funded institution to derive the most benefit from what this book suggests?

I am an archivist, and before that I was a librarian. This is a book about technology, so developers, systems administrators, or others like that might find it interesting, but my primary audience was other librarians and archivists. And in my mind those are pretty broad groups. They could include:

  • students;
  • librarians or archivists who already use a handful of tools or systems in their day-to-day work and would like to know how to use them more efficiently;
  • people who aren’t technical at all, or manage a library or archives and need the appropriate vocabulary to converse with their colleagues in IT; or
  • those situated, if you’re at a big enough place, in something like Library IT, but looking to gain insight into the core practices and principles of the archivists, curators, or librarians they work with.

I tried really, really hard to make this useful to a wide audience (i.e., not just well funded institutions), in part by asking people from smaller institutions, including a local historical society, to contribute case studies, and by ensuring that there were reviewers from a diverse array of institutions. But I also know that I’ve only ever worked for large or very large academic institutions, with all of their undeniable privileges. It’s hard for me to think outside of that box, so I know that despite my best efforts otherwise some of the underlying assumptions I made reflect this environment and that at least some of what I proposed in this book will not work for everyone.

Was there something you learned about the topic as you were writing the book?

More than I could say here. Actually the process of writing helped me to articulate a lot of things I think I might have known in a latent way based on various experiences I’ve had but that had never really manifested. I am very thankful to have had this opportunity to clarify my thinking around this topic.

How much of the book is based on Bentley practice? How much of the book is based on “in a perfect world?”

I do reflect on my own work throughout the book at both the Bentley and Grand Valley State University, and I use the ArchivesSpace-Archivematica-DSpace Workflow Integration project as an example of a way to do systems integration (but do try to make clear that it is not “the” way, and that in fact we probably wouldn’t do it again the same way!). But I also asked colleagues from many other institutions to contribute case studies to make sure it wasn’t just me rambling about how great we are, and I reflected throughout on the work of others, including the work of others in complementary spaces like various open source software communities.

About the “in a perfect world” part. Actually I hope the book is imminently practical. We all know we don’t live in a perfect world, but the book suggests a lot of ways to make do and even thrive in that imperfection, which is actually the thing that keeps things interesting. Actually as someone who likes to listen to podcasts on philosophy and psychoanalysis there a lot in the book about how this way of thinking about what we do can be more harmful than helpful.

The back cover states that the book “[weaves] together both theory and reflective practice.” What’s theoretical in the book? What about the “reflective practice” bit?

The second chapter is probably the most theoretical, as it takes a very broad view, looking at all the various ways that people have done systems integrations and then generalizing from there, suggesting some abstract models that integrations might fit into (and I’m not aware that these have been articulated anywhere else, certainly in the archival literature). These models are referenced throughout the book.

The “reflective practice” part comes from the many practical examples in the book, but also because of the inherent difficulties that exist in writing a book about technology. Already in the couple of years it took me to write this book, the technological landscape has shifted in significant ways. Likewise, any reference to specific tools, systems, or integration methodologies–and I certainly make a few of these in the book–is very likely to be out of date or at least incomplete in just a few short years. I knew this going in (and so did SAA) which is why I attempted throughout the book to focus on higher-level trends in technology–like systems integration–somewhat independently of their particular manifestations, for example, in a specific tool or system in any given, usually very idiosyncratic archival workflow at a particular institution.

So, I tried to hold this tension in what I hope is a fairly sophisticated and ultimately helpful manner.

Did the pandemic add even more difficulty or were you already in the final stretch? And does the pandemic now make you think any differently about the book?

I was mostly done with writing and editing the book by the time the pandemic hit. But the pandemic definitely helped to keep things in perspective, and honestly, there were moments where I questioned whether or not it was kind “tone deaf” or worse to publish a book on this topic at a time when so many people are trying to meet much more basic needs related to health and safety or financial wellbeing or when so much of our work in Curation and at the Bentley has shifted to other matters, for example those related to our Black Lives Matter goal. Of course, I don’t think all these things are mutually exclusive; there are those who do but I disagree with them. But, yes, it did get me thinking differently.

What do you think the biggest barrier is to “building and maintaining an integrated technical ecosystem for digital archives and libraries?”

Lack of what I’d call “critical imagination.” One of the hopes I have for the book is that it helps people better understand the way their technical ecosystem works, including the many people that this ecosystem functions as a proxy for. Hopefully, this will enable them to better imagine the possibilities their technical ecosystem might afford, and therefore ask better questions of it or come up with better solutions to the archival problems they face.

Bentley aside, is there an archive that you see as the ideal model for “building and maintaining an integrated technical ecosystem?”

No! And not even at the Bentley. Of course, there are others I follow and engage with (Rockefeller Archive Center, Stanford University, Duke University, and some others), but we’re all still doing the work of building and maintaining. Nothing is “built” or “maintained.” So, no ideal models yet.

Should this be required reading for all archivists?

Yes. Obviously.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

One fun fact is that there’s an entry in the index for every letter of the alphabet. Thank you “qualified Dublin Core,” “XML/XPath,” “Yale University,” and “Zodiac.”

Categories: talks