This course WILL count towards the in-person requirement for the DAS certificate program.
This is a class focused on working with participants to explore computational strategies (i.e., computational thinking, methods, and tools) to analyze, visualize, and display complex digital/digitized archival records. Hands on demos and exercises will aid participants in developing or enhancing their skills in working with linked data to create new knowledge designed to refine and expand access to complex archival records and historical issues.
The demos and exercises are based on real-world records (examples include: Japanese-American World War II Incarceration Camps, the Legacy of Slavery project hosted at the Maryland State Archives, etc.). The exercises in the case studies are designed to assist participants in analyzing digital collections, extracting metadata, and connecting previously disconnected information into “knowledge graphs.” Theory and practice involving graph analytics and graph databases will be used to illustrate various approaches to representing the archives.
Legal, technological, social, and cultural challenges to access will be discussed including personally identifiable information (PII), security, and intellectual property rights.
Upon completion of this course you’ll be able to:
- Apply the technical, intellectual, and social awareness required to successfully develop and execute digital access projects and references services.
- Develop effective research strategies to resolve or advance solutions to digital information challenges.
- Demonstrate capability in applying digital curation tools in addressing research questions.
- Identify analytic tools needed to manage access to digital archival records in the Age of Big Data.
- Understand the key concepts of computational archival science as they apply to providing access to digital collections.
Who should attend?
Archivist Practitioner, Archivist Manager, Archivist Administrator
DAS Tier: Transformational
DAS Core Competency:
3. Formulate strategies and tactics for appraising, describing, managing, organizing, and preserving digital archives.
4. Integrate technologies, tools, software, and media within existing functions for appraising, capturing, preserving, and providing access to digital collections.
About the Instructors:
Richard Marciano is the founding director of the Advanced Information Collaboratory (AIC), which focuses on exploring the opportunities and challenges of “disruptive technologies” for archives and records management (digital curation, machine learning, AI, etc.), and leveraging the latest technologies to unlock the hidden information in massive stores of records. He recently launched the AIC “FARM” Initiative on the Future of Archives and Records Management, which leverages advances in Computational Archival Science (CAS) through the mapping of Computational Thinking to Archival Science using AI, Machine Learning, and CAS.
He is also a professor at the University of Maryland iSchool, and an affiliate professor at the University of Maryland Computer Science Department and Institute for Systems Research at the School of Engineering. Prior to that, he was a Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 6 years. He was also a Research Scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) for 13 years. His research interests center on digital curation, digital preservation, sustainable archives, and big data. He is also the 2017 recipient of the Emmett Leahy Award for "outstanding and sustained work in digital records and information management". He holds degrees in Avionics and Electrical Engineering, a Master's and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Iowa, and conducted a postdoc in Computational Geography.
Mark Conrad is an archivist with over thirty years’ experience working with archival electronic records. He retired from the National Archives and Records Administration on Halloween, 2019 after 28 years of service. Among other activities he designed, developed, and ran labs dedicated to research on long term preservation of digital materials; and participated in, managed, evaluated, or served as a subject matter expert on cross-discipline research projects addressing issues related to digital preservation and curation. He is one of the Co-Founders of the Advanced Information Collaboratory (AIC)
Over the years, he has appraised, accessioned, arranged, described, preserved, and provided access to electronic records across a range of organizations from the Executive Office of the President, to the State Department, to various components of the Department of Defense and records from the administrative computing center at Penn State University.
For over a decade he has been a member of the working group that developed and maintains ISO 14721 - Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System and ISO 16363 - Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories and related standards. The working group is currently working on the next versions of these two standards.
He has taught students and professionals about electronic records in a variety of settings using different methods. For the 1995-96 academic year he received a Senior Fulbright Scholar award to teach electronic records courses for graduate students and working professionals at University College Dublin, Ireland. From 2008 to 2010 he designed and taught an online electronic records management course, for working professionals around the world, for the University of Dundee, Scotland.
Mark holds an M. A. in Public History from the University of Illinois at Springfield, and a B.A. in History and Political Science from MacMurray College.
If you intend to pursue the DAS Certificate, you will need to pass the examination for this course.
Registration Fee: Early-Bird / Regular
SAA Member: $199 / $249
Employee of SAA Member Institution: $239 / $299
Nonmember: $279 / $349