Welcome to Around the World in Eighty Gigabytes, Alexandra Eveleigh’s blog about the impact of technology on archives, particularly smaller local archives in the UK.
About Me
I’m a research student at University College London (UCL), researching the impact of user participation on archival theory and practice. My research is funded by an Arts and Humanitites Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Award, and is jointly supervised by UCL Department of Information Studies and The National Archives. Further information on my research project is available here.
Prior to this opportunity for a second lease of student life, I was Collections Manager at West Yorkshire Archive Service, the largest UK local authority Archive Service outside London.
I am a serving committee member of the Data Standards Group of the Archives and Records Association (formerly the UK Society of Archivists), and a member of the UK Archives Discovery Network (formerly the National Archives Network).
About the 80GB Blog
This blog began when I was awarded two travelling scholarships during 2008 (hence Around the World) – From the Society of Archivists (now ARA) to attend the DELOS Summer School in Tirrenia, Italy, and a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship to travel to Australia and the USA to research operational digital archives (hence Eighty Gigabytes). The problem of how to preserve digital archives over the long-term is a global issue with an international research base. There are few ‘right’ answers. This blog was created to document my personal journey in investigating international approaches to the curation and preservation of digital materials, and to look at how these solutions might apply to the context of a UK local authority record office.
I continue to post from time-to-time on new initiatives in digital curation research and development, with a specific interest in how these may apply and scale to a small archives.
More recently, I have started a PhD jointly supervised by UCL’s Department of Information Studies and The National Archives provisionally entitled ‘We Think, Not I think: Harnessing collaborative creativity to archival practice; implications of user participation for archival theory and practice‘.
There are several common strands between digital preservation research and my current interests in user collaboration – they both relate to the impact of digital technologies on archival theory and practice, and many of the major issues (eg authority, context, trust, the cultural challenges of embedding technological change in operational settings) are debated in both areas of research.
What I post here does not represent the views of The National Archives or UCL, nor did my previous postings represent the official stance of West Yorkshire Archive Service. All content on this blog is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence, except where otherwise indicated. Comments posted to this blog will also have the same licence.
Around the World in 80 Gigabytes 
G’DAY from Nick in Victoria Australia Grad student in Library and information studies. Just wanted to say thanks for the info on PROV. My hometeam I guess but your little piece on them was excellent. Regards Nick.
Thanks for your nice comment. I very much enjoyed my trip to Melbourne, but PROV was the first place I visited during my Fellowship and I felt I would have made more of it had it come later in my itinerary. I was also new to blogging at the time and tried to write up too much, I think. But I had to start somewhere I suppose! I am glad you found it useful. Good luck with your studies.
Hi Alexandra,
Just wanted to let you know that I came across your blog tonight and have added it as an RSS feed on a social network site I recently created for PROV if that’s okay(?):
http://provcommunity.ning.com
Cheers
asa
online exhibitions officer
PROV