The Future is Folksonomies
We, as humans, are driven to document our experiences and the world around us. This seemingly innate behaviour often presents itself in a myriad of ways. An everyday example being the creation of a photograph to materialise specific moments in our lives. The act of photography itself is a recent development in history which has dramatically shaped the way we perceive and recollect our past. What was once an inaccessible means of capturing the visual experience, is now so commonplace that almost everyone possesses a camera in their pocket. The above quote by winning photographer and author Stuart Franklin describes this exact phenomenon in recent work, labelling it ‘the documentary impulse’. Many people do indeed possess their own collections of keepsakes, diaries and other records that reflect their own personal imprint on the world. The process of documentation and future preservation is a clear method of archiving. However, there remain distinct differences between a family archive and that of a corporation.
The Impartial Archivist
An archive is in many ways a representation or embodiment of the holder. Whether that be an institution, establishment or private collector. Historically this was traditionally reserved for those with a certain degree of wealth and social status. The perceived importance of the documentation reflects that of the holder of the collection, who’s status allows them to record information in the first place. Thus the collection is born and the archivist is appointed as custodian. A role which requires the person to know the collection inside out and decide what is of such value that it may be resurfaced, revisited or re-imagined. The archivist must therefore use descriptive methods to analyse records and provide information about them, in order to make it searchable and understood.
Fundamental to archival science, the principle of Provenance dictates that there must be an order to the records which reflects the sequence in which the creator intended. Original order must be strictly adhered to due to the valuable context it may provide the researcher. There must also be a hierarchy to their arrangement, each set of records containing smaller groupings. Documents of the same origin which have naturally occurred through the daily operations of an institution are described as fonds. As the highest level of archival description, a fonds gives an overview of the collection. Beneath this are differing levels of detail ending in file and item level. Following the guidance of fonds and provenance, each record is subsequently filed in-accordance with the implicit reason for its creation. A timeline of stacked boxes which follow an invisible pattern of events, people and places.
In many ways a collection writes its own history. For example a series of records such as financial reports are perpetually updated for the lifetime of a particular institution. Every morning a news agency automatically files a copy of each printed newspaper upon its daily release. However other records may not be as easily decided upon, which is where the archivist must step in and remove their guise of impartiality. Sacrifices must be made and certain records must inevitably be erased. On the outside an archive may appear to be a record of everything. Yet in reality that cannot be true, as space, time and money all have their limitations.
Long Live South Bank
Often the archivist is entirely unaware of the histories buried within the archive. An example of this being the recent grassroots campaign Long Live South Bank, formed in 2013 by a community of skateboarders. It was a retaliation against the threat of losing a culturally significant space on London’s busy Southbank.The space in question was part of the iconic Queen Elizabeth Hall, built in 1967 during the post-war vision of brutalism. Records mapping out the history of the building can all be found within the archive of its parent institution the Southbank Centre.
In celebration of its completion, endless building studies were written, critics debated its structural features, architects were interviewed at length and their words published in books. Various documents carry the endless names of famous musicians, performers and audience members who have graced its concert hall and auditorium. Yet it was only when the Undercroft of the site was to be renovated that there was any acknowledgement of those who had used the space throughout the years, and whose own history had become ingrained into its concrete columns.
UK skater Nick Zorlac amongst Southbank Undercroft destruction 2005 © David Steel
It is arguable that Skateboard culture has always been under threat, particularly because their history and identity is inextricably linked to the built environment. Therefore removal of a physical space is an unquestionable act of erasure. However cultural significance is inherently a hard thing to describe or convey. Therefore when words would not suffice, the LLSB campaigners sought out other recorded evidence of their communal history. Locating everything and anything that demonstrated their connection to the space; photographs, plans, magazine articles etc. Surprisingly a wealth of history was found to be held in various institutional archives and personal collections, many of which were later published in a book in celebration of the campaign’s remarkable success.
Once the dust had settled, members of the LLSB collaborated directly with the SBC archive during a subsequent project, forming a working relationship with the institution they had previously challenged. As expected, the archive possessed no fonds or item level description specific to skateboarders. Despite having inhabited the space for almost 30 years, there was hardly any trace of their existence. However as a result of shared labour between the archivists and LLSB members, they were able to resurface a plethora of newspaper articles, photographs, plans and written accounts of the community’s presence throughout the building’s lifespan. Through joint effort the relevant material was compiled, recorded, fast-tracked for digitisation and new finding aids created by the archivist to improve searchability and retrieval.
User-Generated Archive
The word folksonomy refers to the use of user-generated metadata, eg. tagging, as a form of information classification system. A term invented by Thomas Vander Wal (2007) combining the words folk and taxonomy, it is focused on the act of collaboration and linguistic freedom. It allows people to create their own descriptive words as more accurate reflections of human expression. It results in a mechanism where users of a specific database or collection are able to retrieve and send documents using a form of communication that holds inherent meaning to them. An example of this being the use of ‘tag clouds’ frequently used by online grass-roots communities to classify community resources.
The transfer of archival responsibility to the user, bypasses the use of traditional archival methods such as fonds and provenance. User tags allow records to belong to an unlimited amount of overlapping categories at any given time. Enabling content to be filtered and arranged according to the context of the viewer’s needs, rather than its place within the collection. It simply relies on users to generate the tags according to how they relate to the individual.
Whilst the term folksonomies refers to digital content, similarities can be seen in the physical engagement between user and archive. Using the skateboarders as a further example, the retrieval of records which related to the community were later tagged in the collection as belonging to the LLSB collection, signifying that it contains context relating to the Queen Elizabeth Hall’s long standing community. The box containing these files now becomes another ‘series’ of records whilst still retaining their previous place in the original collection. There is also the option of being removed from the rest of the collection in order to make it more easily accessible to future researchers, indirectly resulting in the introduction of a novel user-generated category. On a much broader scale folksonomies naturally integrate with various potential crowdsourcing methods. A simple callout for the public to donate their own ‘memories’ to the collection, can spur a generation of metadata tags that may provide more nuanced descriptions of each record, revealing further meaning and value within the context of the collection.
Summary
Successful collaboration between a marginalised groups and institutional archives has the potential to bring to light progressive ways in which an existing archive can be shaped towards future inclusivity. Archaic principles may be supplemented with meta-data structures unleashing the potential for a far more dynamic and responsive archive. One in which the importance of its records can be determined by the expressed desires of the contributors themselves.
Bibliography
Franklin, S., (2016) The Documentary Impulse.
Vander Wal, T. (2007). Folksonomy coinage and definition. Retrieved from http://www.vanderwal.net/folksonomy.html
Jasper Van Der Kort is a member of New Architecture Writers and heritage professional based at Southbank Centre, working across the Southbank Centre Archive, Hayward Gallery Library and the National Poetry Library. A writer with a passion for exploring the historical relationship between people, community and the built environment. He is also a co-founder of Attica, an organisation focused on inter-disciplinary analysis of systemic cultural issues and potential technological solutions.
