The Born Digital Access Bootcamps give archivists and information professionals the skills and connections they need to provide access to born-digital cultural heritage.
In 2015, a team of archivists conducted a research project reviewing existing literature on access to born-digital archives, which they found to be scarce. So at the Society of American Archivists annual meeting that same year, they put on a hackfest to brainstorm solutions to four identified gaps: understanding our users, staff training, advocacy, and efficient workflow development. Since then, a group has been meeting regularly to tackle the staff training issue while building a community of engagement around these and other barriers to providing access to born-digital material. At the 2017 New England Archivists’ annual meeting we debuted the collaboratively-built Born-Digital Access Bootcamp. The bootcamp’s curriculum focused on interpersonal learning and included a half-day interactive user experience testing activity.
The bootcamp was intended to seed a more defined community of practice around providing access to born-digital materials, and do that end, we established our presence as the DLF Born-Digital Access Group shortly after. We’re currently discussing what we’ve learned and still need to know about our users, how we’re providing access and what we hope to improve in the near future, access method dreams, or other topics as we follow the interest of the participants in this new and exploratory group. All practitioners, archivists and otherwise, are welcome to join.