The Colonial Secretary‘s Office (CSO) was the chief administrative office for Western Australia. Between 1829 and 1886 the CSO was responsible for Aboriginal affairs. The CSO correspondence for this period is extensive and is considered the most historically significant collection of colonial archives in Western Australia.
Digitising the original CSO correspondence was identified by the State Records Office of WA (SRO) as an important project. The challenge and opportunity for the SRO is to create full-text digital copies. Advances in OCR, machine learning and other digital technologies, and crowdsourcing to verify processed text, are being considered. Our goal is to reflect carefully and thoroughly on what it means to plan and deliver this digitisation project well ahead of 2029, the bicentenary of the founding of the Swan River Colony.
Digitisation is the activity of converting physical or analogue records to a digital surrogate, copy or representation. Digitisation project planning includes assessing expenses, resources required, technical and format requirements, preparing records and reviewing conservation needs, considering how people will access the digital objects, as well as arranging for digital preservation. It focuses on the objects and their transformation into online content that is open, unrestricted, accessible, and reusable. Digitised archives facilitate accountability and democracy by shifting access beyond the confines of the reading room. However, as Barbara Reed1 reminds us, badly constructed digitisation projects are simply an act of format transformation.
What isn’t covered well in a practical, actionable way, is what and how to decide actions related to people, and their knowledge and moral rights in records. Advice on considering people in digitisation projects includes developing channels of consultation and communication with users and potential users, the use of sensitivity labels, and being clear about copyright ownership.
The CSO records contain material that has the potential to elicit multiple responses, positive and negative, for many, including descendants. Making these records discoverable online will challenge accepted views on identity and memory.
Navigating the array of statements, policies, principles, protocols, and declarations written for Indigenous and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, we found that the Indigenous Archives Collective Position Statement on the Right of Reply presented a sound foundation to ground our approach and planning.
This interactive discussion session presents the story of our planning journey and explores our values as professionals, public servants and individuals. We explore three key themes:
1. Tensions in digitising for open access and discoverability while meeting community expectations and needs.
2. How to figure out expectations and needs of people.
3. The Right of Reply and the Indigenous Archives Collective position statement.
The goal is to ask audience participation through in-person and online activities such as live generation of word clouds. The ASA Conference presents a unique and valuable opportunity to engage peers in examining our practical, ethical, and intellectual values and obtain feedback.
1 https://rkroundtable.org/2014/08/01/reinventing-access/