Revealing collections, exploring discovery? Participatory archiving and creating 'thick description' catalogues for medical and scientific archives

尽管自20世纪70年代以来，英国档案馆存放了大量重要的科学和医学档案，但由于编目不足，档案馆工作人员缺乏科学专业知识，只有有限的背景信息，许多藏品未得到充分利用。威康图书馆的工作人员希望通过扩大其利益相关者在档案过程中的参与来解决这个问题。图书馆可以接触到各种专家和学科专家网络，从生物医学科学和精英临床学科的专业实践社区到患者支持和压力团体，并希望所有这些团体的专业知识都能被捕获并纳入档案目录。值得注意的是，图书馆认为，这些参与性的方法也可以涉及“历史上被边缘化的社区”，如心理健康幸存者历史网络，在档案的描述。这些目标与当代学术界和专业界关于“参与式档案”的辩论相吻合，参与式档案旨在使记录的创造者、保存者和使用者能够参与专业的档案过程，目的是对记录及其创造和使用的背景进行更详细的描述和更深入的了解。最近一些将用户生成的内容观点应用于目录的尝试是由Web 2.0技术的使用推动的，然而，参与性档案做法包括许多技术依赖性较低的方法，如重温档案收藏（RAC）和与创作者和存放者的生活史访谈。在这些例子中，用户的贡献是通过档案管理员安排和记录用户与收藏品之间的接触获得的，其结果可用于增强目录说明。用户参与的方法，如这些可以用来捕捉传统的“专家”，包括档案收藏的创作者和存款人的知识，以及个人和团体的反应，可能被定性为具有文化，而不是“专家”协会与档案。将更多的主观和本能的反应纳入档案目录，对有效性、可靠性和代表性提出了一些严重的问题，档案管理员在评估这一点时的作用是一个重大的专业挑战。 这项研究的目的是提供一个深入了解的潜在优势，机遇和挑战的参与性方法，档案描述，通过研究的影响，雇用RAC和生活史的采访，一些科学档案在威康图书馆。这项研究的一个关键因素将是探索如何做出关于所捕获数据的可靠性或其他方面的决定，然后记录在案，以及如何满足任何由此产生的伦理问题。关键的研究问题是 * 在科学档案目录中捕捉和利用多种声音的挑战是什么？这些方法对公众参与科学档案有何影响？* 在目录中纳入多种声音会产生什么专业影响？档案管理员是否应该在审核和构建新内容方面发挥核心作用，如果是，如何记录这一作用？*将多种声音纳入目录的伦理含义是什么？*关于从其他学科获取和利用用户贡献的内容，可以学到哪些经验教训？*参与办法与选定的交付机制（包括基于技术的解决办法）之间的关系是什么？虽然研究的重点是维康图书馆的科学和医学档案，但研究结果将对所有遗产保护者产生更广泛的兴趣。

Despite the large number of significant scientific and medical archives deposited in UK archives since the 1970s, many collections are underused because of inadequate cataloguing, a lack of scientific expertise amongst archive staff and only limited contextual information. Staff at the Wellcome Library wish to address this by extending the involvement of its stakeholders in the archival process. The Library has access to a diverse network of experts and subject specialists, ranging from specialist communities of practice in the biomedical sciences and elite clinical disciplines, to patient support and pressure groups, and hopes that the expertise of all these groups can be captured and incorporated into archival catalogues. Significantly the Library believes that these participatory approaches could also involve 'historically marginalised communities', such as the mental health survivor history network, in the description of archives. These objectives mesh with contemporary academic and professional debates about the 'participatory archive' which seek to enable record creators, depositors and users to participate in professional archival processes with the aim of creating more detailed descriptions and a deeper understanding of the record and the context of its creation and use. Some recent attempts to apply user-generated content perspectives to the catalogue have been driven by the use of Web 2.0 technologies, however participatory archival practice includes many less technologically dependent approaches, such as Revisiting Archive Collections (RAC) and life history interviews with creators and depositors. In these examples, user contributions are obtained by the archivist staging and recording encounters between users and the collections, the results of which can then be used to enhance catalogue descriptions. User participation approaches such as these can be employed to capture the knowledge of both traditional 'experts', including the creators and depositors of archive collections, and the responses of individuals and groups that might be characterised as having a cultural rather than 'expert' association with the archives. Incorporating more subjective and instinctive responses into archive catalogues poses some serious questions about validity, reliability and representativeness and the archivist's role in assessing this is a major professional challenge. This research aims to deliver a thorough understanding of the potential strengths, opportunities and challenges of participatory approaches to archival description by examining the impacts of employing RAC and life history interviews to a number of scientific archives at the Wellcome Library. A crucial element of this research will be to explore how decisions about the reliability or otherwise of the data captured are made and then documented, and how any resulting ethical issues are met. The key research questions are* What are the challenges in capturing and utilising multiple voices within scientific archive catalogues? What are the impacts of such approaches on public engagement with scientific archives? * What are the professional implications of the incorporation of multiple voices within the catalogue? Should the archivist have a central role in moderating and framing this new content and if so how is this role to be documented?* What are the ethical implications of incorporating multiple voices into the catalogue?* What lessons can be learnt about the capture and utilisation of user contributed content from other disciplines?* What is the relationship between the approach to participation and the chosen delivery mechanism (including technology based solutions)?Although the research focuses on scientific and medical archives in the Wellcome Library, the results will be of wider interest to all heritage professio