LIANZA Meetup - Collecting in a time of COVID-19

This Meetup was made possible by LIANZA's partnership with Recollect.

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Victoria Passau, Collection Manager, Online Cenotaph,  Auckland War Memorial Museum reports back on our recent Meetup:

“History and the archival record is really  important to help us get perspective. To… realise it’s unprecedented in our lifetime, but not necessarily in human history. That’s what archives and records do. They give us perspective.” 

- Chief Archivist Richard Foy in K. Knight (9 May 2020). 
"Keeping track of history as we make". Canvas - Weekend Herald, pp. 6-7.

On Wednesday 20 May 2020 about 75 members of New Zealand’s GLAM sector met to discuss contemporary collecting in the time of COVID-19. “Contemporary collecting is defined as the collecting of objects, stories and material culture that reflect the recent past and what is happening today.” - Contemporary Collecting Toolkit Museum Development North West and Jen Kavanagh [PDF] 

The aim of the session was to find out what New Zealand GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) are doing or planning to do to document the national and local response to the pandemic. The session was facilitated by me, Victoria Passau, Collection Manager Online Cenotaph at Auckland Museum.

While a number of institutions have undertaken contemporary collecting, over the past decade, in response to events such as the Christchurch mosque attacks, Tasman fires, the earthquakes in Canterbury and Kaikoura as well as the Women's March, it is still a relatively new practice for some in the New Zealand GLAM sector. This meetup was a great opportunity for the sector to share their experiences, during COVID and to consider the successes, failures and fish-hooks of rapid response collecting. The diversity of attendees and the level of engagement showed a real opportunity for creating a series of meetups that consider contemporary collecting across the GLAM sector. 

The topics people were most interested in discussing related to ensuring we collect the diversity of experiences, licensing and reuse, the ethics of collecting, how we better represent vulnerable populations in these projects, the challenges around collecting in a lockdown and the concept of after care both in relation it description and preservation but also in terms of donor relationships. As some of my Auckland Museum colleagues had written in their COVID-19 Collecting Plan we need “to ensure that any collecting is undertaken in a considered and ethical manner that safeguards the well-being of communities and… staff.”  Auckland Museum is happy to share their strategy. Please get in touch with me and I can send it to those interested.

In my introduction I also suggested that if we are telling stories of the now for our future generations how are we ensuring we are doing this well and with integrity. As Nina Finigan, Curator Manuscripts at Auckland Museum, had messaged me the day before the session, we want to source “the stories that aren’t just about Easter in lockdown and sourdough”. 

CASE STUDY

The session started off with a great example of COVID-19 collecting from Reid Perkins, the Community Heritage Coordinator at Upper Hutt City Libraries: https://uhcl.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/30557.

Upper Hutt City Libraries have utilised the Recollect platform, the sponsor for the meetup. This project included digital photos and oral history interviews via Zoom. The attendees commented how helpful it was to see a real life example.

Recollect have published a resource on contemporary collecting, which covers deciding how and what to collect and challenges for contemporary collecting. You might want to read more about how ​Recollect can help facilitate contemporary collecting.
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Collaboration

Collaboration was a key topic of discussion with Shae Trewin from Nelson Provincial Museum (NPM) outlining the “Life in the Bubble” project created in partnership with Nelson Public Libraries (NPL). The collaboration was then expanded to include Tasman District Libraries to assist with obtaining stories from beyond the Tasman region.They had found that the Covid-19 experience had helped to formalise the relationship between these organisations. A positive outcome was that each organisation was able to work to their strengths. For example the NPL had solid relationships with the more vulnerable groups in the Nelson community and were able to lead on collecting their experiences. NPM were more au fait, with contemporary collecting as a whole, as they had previously collected content relating to the 2019 Tasman Fires. In this case Trewin noted the limitations of collecting content more than six months after the event, a helpful insight. NPM also maintains a list of community “champions” to approach for content and material which helps guide and divide up the load of approaching people between collaborative partners. This list will be useful for ongoing contemporary collecting in the event of any further significant disasters occurring. NPM has existing policies and donation forms which sets boundaries for what to collect, how to collect and how to manage content that may be sensitive or graphic. 

Timing

The concept of timing was considered throughout the discussion especially in relation to the sensitive nature of collecting during a crisis. For example the National Library noted that they attempt to be as quick as possible with web collecting and the  legal deposit legislation of course helps them to be able to collect without seeking permission. However, in most cases organisations need to build personal relationships with the donors before content is provided and this can take time. Nina Finigan discussed the creation of a COVID-19 Collecting plan and emphasised the importance of being sensitive to the experience of the donors or communities you are asking to contribute. Attendees agreed you didn’t want to come off as opportunistic when collecting material that is associated with grief and hardship. ​

Collecting in crisis

Jo Condon from Canterbury suggested that collecting institutions may wish to seek advice from similar institutions in Canterbury, who have already gone through the process of contemporary collecting during the Canterbury earthquakes (and more recently the mosque terrorist attacks). Condon argued that the benefit of hindsight is often useful, and those institutions might be able to share good advice on what worked well and what they would do differently. Different institutions will collect/create content for different purposes, for example public libraries and museums can help to facilitate their local community’s sharing of a collective experience, whereas tertiary institutions may collect for the purposes of current and future academic research.  
She also reflected that the collecting undertaken during that time have had a real influence on the quakes stories now being told.

Web harvesting ​

The discussion moved to the National Library’s role in web harvesting. Attendees commended the work of the National Library in terms of harvesting websites, Twitter and Facebook for the National Digital Heritage Archive. The meetup was pleased to hear that the Alexander Turnbull Library is identifying memes across social media with 700 being identified so far.  ​

Collecting the mundane as well as the magnificent

Chris Szekely, Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library posited the importance of collecting the “mundane”. This was a good reminder for those creating collecting policies and plans to ensure they not only collect the high brow creations but the everyday experiences. This idea also linked into the consideration of size and scope with some organisations having no limit of how many items were being collected while others, like Auckland Museum, had limited the number to a finite number, in their case 100.

Chris also provided a very helpful statement that could be added to organisations websites to remind people to save realia from the lock down:

LOCKDOWN IS OVER, BUT DON’T PRESS DELETE JUST YET….​

Did you record your thoughts, experiences, activities during lockdown? New Zealanders found all sorts of ways to document their thoughts, experiences and activities of the COVID-19 alert level phenomenon. From videos to emails, diaries and letters, memes, tweets and artworks. In decades to come, researchers will be curious about this unique time in New Zealand’s history, and how we handled it as individuals, families, households and communities. Consider connecting with your local museum, library or community archive before you press delete or throw your creations away. We can help put you in touch.

Themes and threads ​

Other topics that were touched on included appraisal, description and cataloguing, Oral History initiatives and collecting conspiracy theories. The more significant discussion points can be seen below.
 
Collecting styles 

• community led - i.e. a public call out 
  
• through targeted collecting - i.e. shoulder tapping people in local communities
  
• Digital platforms - the public can upload content directly into the collection
  
• How many organisations were actively creating content vs collecting more passively (i.e. responding to offered content).
  

 
Rights and permissions

• the process for getting interviewee permissions for open access online delivery. Reid noted an individual had asked for a video to be removed but was happy for the audio recording to be used instead.
  
• Question how to collect digital material offered that has already been uploaded to YouTube? What rights does YouTube claim even though creators may have original data file?
  
  • YouTube users grant a non-exclusive licence to YouTube.
    
• Implications of CC-BY
  
• Nelson Provincial Museum had put in place a Graphic and Sensitive Objects policy to accommodate authors or individuals who wanted to share material but in a more controlled or restricted manner.
  
• Jane Groufsky from Auckland Museum noted in the chat “with instagram you are giving Facebook a non-exclusive licence (meaning they can do what they like with what you upload) but you don’t lose copyright as the creator.  The problem is usually getting content off. For still images the owner is the only one able to properly get them out and instagram sends them all to you in a zip file with new filenames (you can also get comments etc in text files). Not sure how video works from it (as video will be larger files) but I imagine it is similar in that the owner has the right to make a download from it upon request. Direct from the donor would be easier, but if direct [on] Instagram we may need [them] to get them for us is all (but I’ve not tried with video). Because they (FB) have the licence they can alter/provide them in a different format than uploaded.
  

 
Replication of content being collected

• How much have organisations considered what is being/will be collected by national institutions, in terms of not wanting to replicate material and keeping it regional and specific to your community?  
  

 
Private collecting

• Are there opportunities for helping people create their own private collections, especially around traumatic events, with a view to them becoming public much later?
  

Next steps

A survey was sent out at the end of the session. While we didn't not receive a huge number of responses (18 out of 114 RSVPS), respondents felt it was a valuable discussion especially around ethics, timing and consideration of how to engage with vulnerable communities. They also highlighted the need for an ongoing conversation. 
 
Topics for follow up meetings could include writing collecting policies or plans, archiving social media file formats, storing and sharing content, outreach, collaborations between institutions and the opportunity to discuss real life examples including those from smaller institutions or communities.
 
Overall, the meetup showed a real commitment to collecting a diversity of voices and perspectives from across the GLAM sector. It identified the need to further build on a New Zealand community of practice for Contemporary Collecting. Participants were very appreciative of LIANZA leading this conversation and 90% of survey respondents said they would attend another similar event. Watch this space.

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A huge thanks to Victoria for her write-up. You can follow Victoria on Twitter or email her:

@v_passau 
[email protected]