Elizabeth-Anne Johnson | University of Manitoba (original) (raw)

Videos by Elizabeth-Anne Johnson

A lightning talk given at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2021 about the process of migra... more A lightning talk given at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2021 about the process of migrating archival material off DVD-RAMs for preservation

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Papers by Elizabeth-Anne Johnson

Conference Presentations by Elizabeth-Anne Johnson

Association of Canadian Archivists annual conference, 2022

As archives create, acquire, preserve, and disseminate more and more digital material, the enviro... more As archives create, acquire, preserve, and disseminate more and more digital material, the environmental and semantic impacts of this work become more apparent. Is storing three copies of everything necessary to fulfill our responsibilities to the material we steward? Are there automated appraisal processes we could use to cut down on the volume of data we store? And how does a digital environment affect the way archival material is discovered, accessed, and used?

Informed by work being done in the environmental humanities and ongoing explorations of low-carbon research methods, this paper will discuss the process of digital archiving and concrete approaches archives can take to lowering their carbon footprint. By looking at electronic archiving work through these lenses, I will examine how digital archives practice impacts the research and interpretation of archival material online.

DHSI Summer Colloquium, 2020

In 2016, the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections acquired the archives of E... more In 2016, the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections acquired the archives of EMI Music Canada. All archival collections are unique, but this collection presented a distinct challenge: along with the archival material in the collection came databases containing administrative, descriptive, and technical metadata for the voluminous audiovisual archive. While this metadata is structured, it is structured along an in-house schema developed by EMI International; at times this schema is applied inconsistently and incompletely. As the U of C proceeds with migrating this analogue and digital AV material to preservation digital formats for inclusion in a DAM, we need to develop a structured metadata format that meets our institutional needs while incorporating the unique, valuable, and sometimes problematic metadata supplied by the creator.

Presented as a case study, this presentation will detail the steps the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections is taking to develop a metadata schema that can integrate the donor-provided metadata with archival descriptive metadata and the metadata we generate as we process the collection. In order to capture and make available as much information as possible, we plan to use a combination of METS, ISAD(G), PREMIS, and a schema built specifically to deal with time-based media, such as PBCore, to capture information about the objects in this collection.

The University of Manitoba is home to a number of early printed books, so it is also home to a nu... more The University of Manitoba is home to a number of early printed books, so it is also home to a number of medieval manuscript fragments that have been transformed from the books they themselves used to be into binding material for the printed books. While the printed books are catalogued, the fragments are not. This paper argues that the process of archival description is the best way to catalogue these fragments and make them available to the public. Treating manuscript fragments as archival objects means that we can treat them both as unique items, which they are, and as part of a larger whole, regardless of how much of that whole remains. My paper will attempt to draw archival and editorial theories and practices together and to demonstrate the archival-ness of manuscript fragments, as well as the abilities of the archival concepts of provenance and description to mediate fragments, looking particularly at those held at the University of Manitoba. Tom Nesmith’s work on the theory of societal provenance suggests that an archival object is not merely the product of a creator, but is rather the product of a society. This approach is similar to that of book historians and textual critics, who often consider the contexts of books along with their physical forms. By focussing on the common strengths of archivists and book scholars, and by learning about each other’s methods, we can develop ways to care for and make accessible these unique and neglected texts.

An overview of some of the most significant medieval manuscript fragments discovered at the Unive... more An overview of some of the most significant medieval manuscript fragments discovered at the University of Manitoba.

Talks by Elizabeth-Anne Johnson

Master's Thesis by Elizabeth-Anne Johnson

Digitizing archival material is by now a standard part of archival practice. However, accurately ... more Digitizing archival material is by now a standard part of archival practice. However, accurately describing and representing this material in textual descriptions is a challenge that cannot be addressed using the Rules for Archival Description, the current Canadian archival description standard. This thesis makes the case for collaborating with textual studies and digital humanities scholars to improve the framework within which descriptions are written, as well as for reaching out to members of the public and improving archival representation through crowdsourcing. The thesis also includes a case study examining the ways medieval manuscript fragments could be best represented in online description.

A lightning talk given at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2021 about the process of migra... more A lightning talk given at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2021 about the process of migrating archival material off DVD-RAMs for preservation

3 views

Association of Canadian Archivists annual conference, 2022

As archives create, acquire, preserve, and disseminate more and more digital material, the enviro... more As archives create, acquire, preserve, and disseminate more and more digital material, the environmental and semantic impacts of this work become more apparent. Is storing three copies of everything necessary to fulfill our responsibilities to the material we steward? Are there automated appraisal processes we could use to cut down on the volume of data we store? And how does a digital environment affect the way archival material is discovered, accessed, and used?

Informed by work being done in the environmental humanities and ongoing explorations of low-carbon research methods, this paper will discuss the process of digital archiving and concrete approaches archives can take to lowering their carbon footprint. By looking at electronic archiving work through these lenses, I will examine how digital archives practice impacts the research and interpretation of archival material online.

DHSI Summer Colloquium, 2020

In 2016, the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections acquired the archives of E... more In 2016, the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections acquired the archives of EMI Music Canada. All archival collections are unique, but this collection presented a distinct challenge: along with the archival material in the collection came databases containing administrative, descriptive, and technical metadata for the voluminous audiovisual archive. While this metadata is structured, it is structured along an in-house schema developed by EMI International; at times this schema is applied inconsistently and incompletely. As the U of C proceeds with migrating this analogue and digital AV material to preservation digital formats for inclusion in a DAM, we need to develop a structured metadata format that meets our institutional needs while incorporating the unique, valuable, and sometimes problematic metadata supplied by the creator.

Presented as a case study, this presentation will detail the steps the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections is taking to develop a metadata schema that can integrate the donor-provided metadata with archival descriptive metadata and the metadata we generate as we process the collection. In order to capture and make available as much information as possible, we plan to use a combination of METS, ISAD(G), PREMIS, and a schema built specifically to deal with time-based media, such as PBCore, to capture information about the objects in this collection.

The University of Manitoba is home to a number of early printed books, so it is also home to a nu... more The University of Manitoba is home to a number of early printed books, so it is also home to a number of medieval manuscript fragments that have been transformed from the books they themselves used to be into binding material for the printed books. While the printed books are catalogued, the fragments are not. This paper argues that the process of archival description is the best way to catalogue these fragments and make them available to the public. Treating manuscript fragments as archival objects means that we can treat them both as unique items, which they are, and as part of a larger whole, regardless of how much of that whole remains. My paper will attempt to draw archival and editorial theories and practices together and to demonstrate the archival-ness of manuscript fragments, as well as the abilities of the archival concepts of provenance and description to mediate fragments, looking particularly at those held at the University of Manitoba. Tom Nesmith’s work on the theory of societal provenance suggests that an archival object is not merely the product of a creator, but is rather the product of a society. This approach is similar to that of book historians and textual critics, who often consider the contexts of books along with their physical forms. By focussing on the common strengths of archivists and book scholars, and by learning about each other’s methods, we can develop ways to care for and make accessible these unique and neglected texts.

An overview of some of the most significant medieval manuscript fragments discovered at the Unive... more An overview of some of the most significant medieval manuscript fragments discovered at the University of Manitoba.

Digitizing archival material is by now a standard part of archival practice. However, accurately ... more Digitizing archival material is by now a standard part of archival practice. However, accurately describing and representing this material in textual descriptions is a challenge that cannot be addressed using the Rules for Archival Description, the current Canadian archival description standard. This thesis makes the case for collaborating with textual studies and digital humanities scholars to improve the framework within which descriptions are written, as well as for reaching out to members of the public and improving archival representation through crowdsourcing. The thesis also includes a case study examining the ways medieval manuscript fragments could be best represented in online description.