Archives and the Paradox of Informational Choice

Separating the Signal from the Noise in the Digital Age

By Ed Sumcad, MARA, MPA, CRM, IGP 

Introduction

During the 2015 Society of American Archivists (SAA) Annual Meeting at the Cleveland Convention Center, Kathleen D. Roe of the New York State Archives and 70th SAA President posed the simple contextual re-framing. What experiences do archives provide customers? (Roe, 2016) Why do Archives keep this stuff? Why should people care about archival repositories? Why do archives matter to anyone? From a purely rational and academic standpoint, it by far easier to explain the nuances and technical aspects of the Archival Sciences as “…a systematic body of theory that supports the practice of appraising, acquiring, authenticating, preserving, and providing access to recorded materials…” for the betterment of humankind. Though there exists the inherent criticality that archival records survive for the use of future users, the urgency and need do little to compel support for archives and archivists. An understanding of why the “logical argument” fails is a result that those we must garner support, our customers, do not always follow a logical process in making the choices they make. To exacerbate the difficulty in selling a rational argument for the information held within our archival repositories, the “product” of information and the sources are so varied. The ubiquity of mobile device paired with Web 2.0, provides the consumer a confusing array of choices, perspectives, and consumer-driven content to the individual at ever increasing volume. By 2020, the data we create will reach 44 zettabytes or 44 trillion gigabytes. (https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executivesummary.htm) How accurate will the information from these sources be and how will society use it to make decisions for the future? There will be nearly an infinite number decisions/options/direction that society can make at any given time as a direct result of the technologies we have made. Is this good thing? Per the field of economics and psychology, the answer may be no. In this work, I will review the eclectic material of other practitioners, scholars, and academics from a myriad of disciplines to better understand the needs archival customers of the future.

Acidic Paper | Faster Process, Poorer Product

For at least the last two millennia, the book, printed on sturdy rag paper, has been the primary “information technology” used to transfer knowledge from an individual to another. To increase the processing speed, ease, and scale of this technology, the acid-paper-making process was created as an innovation credits to the scientific methods of the industrial revolution. Civilization in the industrialized world strove to create a literate public and increase access to knowledge of the past, present, and future. However, the slipshod quality of the information technology of acidic paper, lead to an increasing proliferation of governmental and cultural records produced on such a feeble medium, that many such records are endangered to become dust in repositories across the western world. While only a small percentage of these fragile documents will be permanently preserved, the sheer volume of unique vantage points into history and evidence of the past is overwhelming. Since then, collections of original informational pieces and evidential record of society are scattered in archival repositories throughout the nation. The acidic paper on which they were printed became a harbinger of a consistent mindset of the industrial revolution that has remained even today. They don’t make them like they used to. The philosophy of developing information technology to enable us to generate, disseminate, store, and use information in a variety of different formats and media, can be seen with each release of a new mobile device, software-as-a-service, or high-speed Internet. The same content can be reproduced and shared across social networks electronically, stored on film, and printed and read on paper. With this societal preoccupation on speed, access, and ease, the informational content of today exists on mediums of uncertain longevity and questionable authenticity. With archival institutions and the humanities devalued over societal for speed, the ideological descents of the Industrial Revolution (e.g. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has left much of the archival community in financial distress at an unprecedented level. The overwhelming challenges to preserve the historical materials and the “truth” it evidences has become too costly to fix. Furthermore, the increasing use of digital technology by the government for creation, use, inactive storage, and disposition of print materials to reduce costs imposes new challenges for preserving history. (Theimer, 2010) But with the growing advance of Internet 2.0 and mobile devices, how does the physical realm of information creation, distribution, and now, analysis, of that information compare to the information explosion our species has witnessed? How do we choose between more information to make decisions about policy yet balance its unmanaged growth, authenticity, and relevance for the future?

Defining the Paradox of Informational Choice

As part of the Western world, the notion of opportunity and freedom of choice has been critical to the well-being of every citizen. Information drives these decisions, and more have been available to society than any group of people has ever known. Freedom of choice is the thing that makes us human and autonomous. The assumption is that more options, especially regarding information, is a good thing. There are even economic arguments that this allows for competition to the advantage of consumers. However, with more information and the opportunity and freedom to make choices, researchers in the sciences of psychology and human behavior have seen diminishing returns when the volume of information and choices increase beyond our capabilities to process them. (Kahneman and Teversky, 1984)

An Anecdotal Qualitative Case Study of the Millennial Author

The contemporary reality of digital natives creates so many streams of information and choices which continuously bombard these senses in format, volume, and reputability, which when taken raw as an aggregate, what remains is a mosaic of diverse, fragmentary, and unworkable likes, tweets, mentions, etc. At face value, the information overloads the limbic systems. If the availability of information is “power” within society, individuals born between the years 1980 to 1992, known as Millennials, are the unfortunate generation to stick our finger in the electrical outlet. Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation, per population estimates released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau. Millennials, those defined as individuals in the ages of 18-34 in 2015, now number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers (ages 51-69). (Fry, 2016) To channel the information and automate potential sources of information, those of the Millennial generation employ applications to “filter” the information needed to function each day, allowing the automation of choosing based on our unique likes and dislikes. This turns the information into digestible tidbits that our brains can dissect. Notifications on our mobile devices switched on, suspect articles are scrutinized for a political slant, and users are alerted to informational updates in real time from various news sources. However, once channeled, our ability to figure out how events transpired around us is often impossible. Often, living in the “moment” requires ignoring the perspective on events in which we are still involved. So, to gather that information, what do we do? We “Google” or “Wikipedia” it. However, given the variety of information (that required us to use a filter in the first place), the knowledge of a single “truth” is rarely immediately discernible. To compensate for this technological failure, individuals the generation often perform the unthinkable. We navigate to “Search Result” pages beyond those initially presented to us by “Google” as required by of those of us in the archival profession. It is our minimum professional duty. As we dive deeper and deeper to assemble our ad-hoc interpretation of different informational sources, the truth we had sought for so desperately is interrupted, by a text from the wife. Dinner at 6 pm? Sure. What should we eat? The Yelp app is opened, and a choice of multiple locations are identified for the “data analyzed” choosing compiled by an aggregate of our peers rating the establishments on varying levels of gastronomic appeal. In this short hiatus of seeking an accurate interpretation of information, the realization is made that the browser window on the mobile device had was closed. Egad Siri! How is it that this device tracks whereabouts through satellite across latitude and longitude, but only recognizes voice commands 50% of the time. Then in brief remembrance of the author’s Aunt Sue’s memory problems, the “truth” initially sought before his wife’s ill-timed text is forgotten. Agonizing for a few seconds the author back tracks through the sequence of previously fired synapses and dendrites for the information search to resurface. Re-engaging with the surroundings and noticing that a highway patrolman on a motorcycle had begun to follow, the author relocates his mobile device aside, so the radiant light diminishes from view, leaving only the visible silhouette of a “model driver” attentively observing the vehicles to the left and right. The choice to search for “truth” is postponed for later upon arrival at the office, after dinner, or at home – if the information sought that initiated the search is recalled. For a sample of some of the informational sources we are connected to each day, see the infographic below:

PEBDAU: Problem Exists Between Device and User

David G. Myers of Hope College and Robert E. Lane of Yale University demonstrated that increased freedom of choice, which includes the consumptions of information to operate, is conversely accompanied by decreased well-being in affluent societies. This is also in contrast to the economic achievements of a country’s domestic product doubling over three decades. Despite the progress, consumers that describe themselves as “very happy” declined by about 5 percent among 14 million people with larger proportions of those diagnosed as clinically depressed. (Schwartz, 2004) In the figure below, the psychological reaction to increasing choices versus positive emotions of society decreases as the number of choices increases beyond a certain point. With the constant choices of informational sources to provide us with context each day, archival institutions need to make the “choice” of perusing information within their repository uniquely different.

Implications for Records and Archives

The mobile devices and Web 2.0 that digital natives have come so accustomed to is continuously evolving and “young adults…. are always at the forefront of the new technological society.” (Berg, Fierros & Perez, nd) The role of archivists must change in a world where there are so many choices to acquire information “Patrons have come to expect that content will be available in digital form and that they will be able to interact with that content and obtain research help ...virtually”. (Daines & Nimer, 2010) Through that expectation, information is now available on demand in volumes never seen before by our species. How will this information be curated and used in making decisions for society? From birth to death, the physical and digital records of our lives can be found anywhere from the papers kept by the counties/townships we leave to our children to continue our legacy. If an individual was of significant influence, either through notoriety or noble exploits, it is more likely that society documented their contributions. The number of activities and happenings are specifically personal and exclusive to each of us. It shapes our perception of our world and influences the shared “truth” of a generation. What we know of the past, the contextual sensibility of archival institutions, and the research value of the information contained within our holdings are likewise shaped by the “collective perception” and “truths” of those of society we know. Though we create machines and algorithms that apply strict logic to our world, and through their digital labor ingest the information they produce, our behavioral response to the information is still as sophisticated as our earliest ancestors. Social media tools provide multiple advantages to archival repositories when used effectively. However, the same social media tools can put archival organizations at a disadvantage. Web 2.0 and the availability of information is now the dominant way individuals gather context about the world. These technologies can serve as a platform for collaboration, exploring other perspectives, and sharing wisdom from across the ages to every man, woman, and child. However, these same technologies can serve as a platform for creating divisions between people, redefining how organizations and individuals compete for resources and saturating the world with misinformation to eventually drown out the truth, science, and logic. The immediacy of social media to become a cathartic channel to our emotions and stress responses (coded into our DNA), hijacks our ability to censor negativity and resolve unreasonable fears and spreads these negative thoughts into the ether. There it stays until a network of that individual’s network reports those same concerns and that initial cathartic act becomes a tear in the fabric of civility. The illogical and emotionally charged sentiments, when shared, becomes a social movement derived from fear mongered untruths. Moreover, with our brains inheriting the instinct of "survival now" from our earliest ancestors, the Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato in many of us fall victim to the "fight or flight" of others and get trampled in the chaos.

Archives Should Establish Their Analytical Authority

In the article entitled Archives of the People, by the People, for the People, Max Evans poses the need for archival repositories to reinvent themselves to gain the attention and respect of their users as a source of authority. (Evans, 2007) This becomes increasingly important as the sources of information are so varied and broad-based on individual interests. The collection that Archival collections hold needed to be “branded” differently from the noise that Web 2.0 creates as information competes for the senses to “…meet headlong the rising expectations of an information hungry citizenry, transformed by the Internet in what must be one of the most astounding rapid adaptations to technology in history.” (Evans, 2007) Archival repositories must differentiate their “brand of information” from other sources of information where the volume of content has increased but of questionable repute. The holdings of archives must be as easily accessible for “truth” to be surmised or even pre-vetted on behalf of digital natives and the for Web 2.0. If the information is preserved, but the archival repositories of the future are “…not effective at retrieving and revealing it…” (Evans, 2007) the value of the holdings and the profession will be lost. What is less apparent is identifying the needs of customers to make those collections relevant in their daily lives. Without this analysis of the customer or potential users, the rationale to keep collections becomes harder to define and even promote, when there are so many other sources of information. What makes Archives different and why should citizens care? The prevalence of mobile computing increases the focus on this question. To combat the explosions of information, an archivist has a responsibility to authenticate archival materials, such as historical documents, and to ensure their reliability, integrity, and usability. Archival records must be what they claim to be regardless of medium; accurately represent the activity they were created for; present a coherent picture through an array of content, and be in a usable condition in an accessible location. As more and more information is created each day, archivists should strive to active, yet target analyses must speak for the authenticity of evidential records to ensure that the “signal” of what is “truth” is distinguished from what is “noise” across the Internet.

Reducing Informational Choices by Archives Assigning Truth

The problem of choosing “truthful and authentic” information from “misinformation” was present in the earliest periods of documentation, but it was not until the sixth century that the authentication of suspect information, “fake information,” and forgeries were usual. The legal principle commonly accepted in the ancient world was that “trustworthiness” was not something inherent in documents but was instead given to records in secure storage by “choice” expedited by public officials in designated place, a temple, public office, treasury, or archives. To influence “choice” and bypass the process of assigning trustworthiness, often “fake information” and “forgeries” were introduced into designated records offices and archives to lend them authenticity. However, with all the information ever created by mankind now being comparatively created every two days, the ability to identify fake information can be nearly just as hard as identifying information of truth. Archives should “try to draw attention to their (digital or physical) space by offering exceptional online services, ones that focus on the product delivered…” of truth and non-sensationalized objectivity. (Gerolimos & Konsta, 2011) This would combat the growing informational disengagement and a general distrust of the common sources of truth. However, as mentioned by the great philosophers, democracy cannot exist in the absence of information, or more importantly, in the absence of truth. As a Millennial growing up in the Digital Age, “truth” and “history” can be extraordinarily complex to comprehend. Part of this issue is that the “historical truth” which is the agreed upon shared history of our civilization has been overshadowed by the vocal proponents or opponents of a multitude perspectives. Though this provides a major strength of democracy by the sheer perspectives of other individuals, the lack of consensus can pose problems in posing an “acceptable” narrative of our society’s birth, values, and development. The result of which leads to a de-emphasis in the study and value of history and the politicized its interpretation. The resulting consequence is the preference for society to endorse more apolitical topics such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – which also provides economic benefits to the nation through unequal distribution among the people. However, in the attempt to reduce polarization in the value of history (or basically what happened before), even the once apolitical views of science regardless of its use of discrete and logical debate, has had its “truth” as a shared notion also questioned.

Becoming an Advocate for our Customers

On the SJSU Colloquia page, John Shuler discusses the changing role of the archivists model that we have known for two millennia is no longer sustainable, and the cost will require that the archival professional will need to change to response how information is now consumed. (Shuler, 2015) To add value to the what customers will need in the future, Shuler suggests that instead of simply being a finder of information, which has largely been automated by server farms, archival professional will need to employ more analytical skills and serve as informational advocates for customers. Additionally, they will need to be able to forecast the informational needs of their customers and distill the information so that it can easily be understood apart from the noise expected from Web 2.0. Additionally, future archival professionals will need to increase their technical skills and adapt by being efficient in locating, analyzing, sharing, and explaining information to the public. This perspective is needed in the profession and frames a new kind of emphasis on customers to the extent of becoming a proactive archival professional. In my opinion, and this may seem radical from a Millennial who has never experienced the world without computers, the time for archival repositories to show what they are made of is now. Engagement needs to become the rallying cry to counter the misinformation of today's age. There needs to be an active resurgence in educating individuals and societies about the value of history, humanities, data, science, and facts only found in the primary resources held within our archival holdings. In the 21st century, though we have more data than we know what to do with, the information extracted from that data has become too complex for the average person to analyze and those brokers of information for whom we have relied on to interpret the data has given way to sensationalism and ratings instead of truth. In some cases “social tools will remove …control over resources and inhibit” an archives intellectual control of the materials, often making the information go viral and become victim to defacement through “digital enhancement.” (Dickson & Holley, 2010) Archival repositories should find ways to engage as many individuals with primary resources to foster a desire for truth, curiosity, and the ability to question. This can involve holding outreach events to promote the types of materials in an archival repository may hold and what it means to a community. One way that the National Archives and Records Administration has made archival holdings relevant and engaging is creating platforms to allow the crowd sourced transcription of hand written documents. Another method that has been something that we have discussed within Los Angeles County is the process of identification and the idea of using social media platforms to identify the historical context of popular places using uploaded photographs of average citizens. One such conversation included using Flickr for displaying images of a historical document within our archival collections which has garnered much success for some institution. (Lemelin, 2010) Other popular platforms have also included applications such as "history-pin" and other geospatial aware systems. Once the engagement of an individual begins, and the ability to participate in history, search, and identification for truth, social media and sharing sources of knowledge can combat the growing culture of misinformation and disengagement within our society. It is these types of engagements that separate the blur of information overload, and that truly highlights what makes archival repositories different from the cacophonous rumblings of the Information age. The uniqueness and evidentiary materials of our holdings are a way to engage customers and invite the natural curiosity within us. (Theimer, 2011)

References

Archival Science. (n.d.). Retrieved December 12, 2016, from https://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/a/archival-science Berg, H. C., Fierros, M. D., & Perez, P. C. (n.d.). Cultural Habits in Teenagers and Young Adults in Galicia. Retrieved December 11, 2016, from https://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/statistiques/culture/pratiques-culturelles/pratiquesgalicie.pdf

Daines, J. G., Nimer, C. L. (2010, May 18). The interactive archivist. Retrieved from https://interactivearchivist.archivists.org

Dickson, A., & Holley, R. P (2010). Social networking in academic libraries: The possibilities and concerns. New Library World, 111, 468-479.

Evans, M. J. (Fall/Winter 2007). Archives of the people, by the people, for the people. The American Archivist, 70, 387-400. Retrieved from https://yalearchivalreadinggroup.pbworks.com/f/max_evans_article.pdf

Fry, R. (2016, April 25). Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America's largest generation. Retrieved December 12, 2016, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact tank/2016/04/25/millennials-overtake-baby boomers/

Gerolimos, M., & Konsta, R. (2011). Services for academic libraries in the new era. D- Lib Magazine, 17, 1-12. Kahneman, D., & Teversky, A. (1984, April). Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39(4), 341-350. Retrieved December 11, 2016, from https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/39/4/341/

Lawrimore, Erin. (2013, November). Archives and social media. Lecture conducted virtually via D2l Forum from San Jose State University. Lemelin, E. (2010). Digital archival collections hosted on Flickr: Institutional experience outside of the commons. Faculty Publications and Presentation, Paper 72. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lib_fac_pubs/72

Roe, K. D. (2016). Why Archives? The American Archivist, 79(1), 6-13. Samouelian, M. (Spring-Summer 2009). Embracing web 2.0: Archives and the newest generation of web applications. American Archivist, 72(1), 42-71. Retrieved from https://archivists.metapress.com/content/k73112x7n0773111/fulltext.pdf Schwartz, B. (2004, April). The Tyranny of Choice. Scientific American, 71-75.

Shuler, J.A. (2015, September 29). Information Professional within the Digital Government Complex: Why We Will Matter More and Not Less [YouTube presentation]. Retrieved from https://amazon.sjsu.edu/slisPod/colloquia/fa15/careerShulerFA15.mp3

The Digital Universe of Opportunities: Rich Data and the Increasing Value of the Internet of Things. (n.d.). Retrieved December 12, 2016, from https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executivesummary.htm

Theimer, K. (2010). Web 2.0 tools and strategies for archives and local history collections. New York: Neal-Schuman.

Theimer, K. (Ed.). (2011). A different kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and our users. Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

Thorman, C. J. (2013, August). The use of Web 2.0 technologies in archive: Developing exemplary practice for the use by archival practitioners. Master’s Theses. Paper 4216. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7763&context=et d_theses