Category: 350MC

350MC, Commerical, Importance/Urgency of Archives, Information wants freedom, Publicly Funded, Scarce Information is ExpensiveLeave a comment

350MC Research Presentation

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Title: Does Archive Information Want To Be Free? Firstly, I wanted to research into why archives are important and why we keep them: I found a document from Stephen Plant from University of London who says archives “form a unique and indispensable record for researchers”. Stephen Plant is the records manager at UoL; from this it can be inferred that he has a great deal of knowledge about records, archives and how they are catalogued and managed. Yet, the nature of his work automatically makes us assume that of course he is going to suggest that keeping archives is a positive … Continue reading 350MC Research Presentation

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Research: Getty Images

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In 1995, Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein founded Getty Images to bring the fragmented stock photography business into the digital age. And that’s exactly what they did. We were the first company to license imagery online – and have continued to drive the industry forward with breakthrough licensing models, digital media management tools and a comprehensive offering of creative and editorial imagery, microstock, footage and music. Companies and individuals pay Getty Images for their stock photography/licensed work to accompany their business/blog/CD etc. The company prides itself on offering the best digital images to its clients. Therefore, it is of little … Continue reading Research: Getty Images

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Flickr: The Commons

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In conversation with Aaron Guy (my archive guru) he recalled the Sunderland University Photography Conference from 2011 and how some talks/papers may be of use to me. I couldn’t be more grateful for his effort in helping me retrieve this information: he successfully got the webpage of the talk back online to browse. The last section of talks was called: The Versatile Image: Photography in the Era of Web 2.0. Under this heading I uncovered the paper ‘Flickr the Commons: Challenging Perceptions of Photographic Collections? Summary of talk: Social Media Platforms “generate broad interest on a large scale” Social Media Platforms encourages … Continue reading Flickr: The Commons

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Open Access and the Paywall

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An unlikely relationship. Seemingly more like arch-enemies in the digital economic landscape as Open Access activists freely oppose the paywall which restricts the everyman to information that apparently “wants to be free”. Paywalls A paywall does exactly what it says on the tin: you can’t go through the gate unless you pay to get in. That is unless you’re a super activist who digs the tunnel underneath or climbs over the top. Paywalls can be subscriptions, such as to Newspapers. This is becoming increasing more common as advertisers are moving away from Newspaper sites and onto cheaper more trafficked websites … Continue reading Open Access and the Paywall

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Research: The Library of Congress

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The biggest library in the world, the Library of Congress is a publicly funded archive in the USA with “155.3 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves” (Library of Congress Website). In this research I am going to look more closely into: Its funding/budget Its website functionality and design Funding/Budget: In an article from the New York Times the budget from 2012 to 2013 for the Library of Congress was cut 4% offering $598.4 million; although its actual spend was $632.3 million in 2013. Here are two images from the fiscal budget for this year (2014): The article explains that the digitisation … Continue reading Research: The Library of Congress

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Research: What are Commercial/Public Archives?

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In essence, it is exactly what it says on the tin. Commercial archives are archives which are set to make many from its content, whether that be by subscription, auction or buying print copies. Publicly Funded archive are paid for by governments from taxpayers so that information is free. Starting with commercial archives, I have looked at: Magnum Photos Getty Images Time Magazine Two of which are photographic archives and the third a newsprint archive. Although the subject matter is broad, the physical medium is very specialised: Time Magazine’s archive is of its magazines and what that entails: articles. Magnum … Continue reading Research: What are Commercial/Public Archives?

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Key Research

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From broadly researching into my topic, I have focussed my attention on this secondary research: Does Archive Information want to be Free? Free by Chris Anderson (Book) – This book discusses what ‘free’ or ‘zero price’ means in the current digital economy. Anderson explores the psychology behind ‘free’; different models of ‘free’ and also reflects on the digital activist saying “information wants to be free”. I found this book after looking around the “information wants to be free” quotation. I have found this book particularly relevant for my research into digital economies for me to then make links to the migration … Continue reading Key Research

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Research Proposal

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After months of taking a general interest in the future of digital archiving, including the challenges it faces as physical archives are fast approaching their expiration, I have come to my second revised version of my research proposal. The first being very broad: I wanted to look into the technicalities of what it means to have a usable websites for a user to experience the archive and its contents. I found that there was a serious definition between the commercial and publicly funded archives in terms of their design. However, after much deliberation and talking to Aaron Guy (North of … Continue reading Research Proposal

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Getty Archive

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listen to ‘The Largest Photo Archive in the World’ on Audioboo (function() { var po = document.createElement(“script”); po.type = “text/javascript”; po.async = true; po.src = “https://d15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net/assets/embed.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })(); Visiting the Getty archive is by appointment only. The Getty archive is said to be the biggest photographic archive in the world of over 30 million photographs in its possession. Sarah McDonald is the curator of the archive and I listened to her interview with Source Magazine as part of their series on photographic archives. The Getty archive library has been collecting since the late 1940s from … Continue reading Getty Archive