The document discusses how Danish archives are using social media and other digital technologies. It notes that most archives have a Facebook presence but with fewer than 500 likes. Archives are also experimenting with Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms. Crowdsourcing projects have indexed over 15 million records. Emerging areas include augmented reality, mobile apps, and opening up archives through APIs and web services. Overall archives are still learning how best to engage online audiences and connect digital and physical resources.

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3. The State Archives consist of 6 institutions found here www.sa.dk
ODA – Organization of Danish Archives consist of abt 50 – 60 including ”theme archives”. Many of
the ODA-archives are public archives run by a municipality.
Denmark also has a large number of private, local archicves often run by volunteers
In general – archival institutions – especially the larger city- and municipality archives are
increasingly getting a broader view on what ”being an archive” means. In 2008, we had a large
”Heritage 2.0” conference http://arkivformidling.wordpress.com/20-og-kulturarven/ and a ”23-
things”-course have been conducted i 2010. It did not have 23 – only 10 ”things” though.
Right now we´re seing a lot of interesting projects. There are projects for schools and for other
specific target groups. Projects, that are heritage projects and could just as well have been done by a
museum
Mobile and AR are emerging – and one of the interestning archives to check out would be Køge City
Archives at http://koegearkiverne.dk/. They have been experimenting for long e.g. with geo-caching,
and recently launched the first archival-AR-project for schools, http://kanonenitelefonen.dk/. The
content is very closely connected with the national curriculum.
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5. About 27 archives have a prescence on social networking sites at the present.
This may not be much out of an archival landscape with about 50 – 60 larger or medium sized
archives, so there is room for further development.
Most archives have only one prescence – Facebook, and most of the archives also have less than
500 likes.
Using social networking sites is uninteresting, if it is not social. We need contacts (”likers”,
”followers” etc.) – but we also need content, that is of mutual interest. With inspiration from the
report ”Let´s get Real” from Culture24 (http://weareculture24.org.uk/projects/action-research/), I
have tried to measure IPM of Danish archives on Facebook, using the free Danish tool http://page-
analyzer.dk/, that will give insight one month back. Another recommendable tool is
http://www.museum-analytics.org/ which also accept archives.
Being on Facebook, and posting content is not enough, we have to evaluate and measure, if anyone
cares what we post. Is it liked, commented or shared? If not - there is room for improvement in the
quality of content, the frequency of posting, activities carried out etc.
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6. The ”marketing approach” doesn´t work that well for us ☺
What do work is talk about out digital services and sharing original content
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7. It´s not, that we´re doing everything right at The State Archives (none of us are) – but l will share
this – our most popular post ever.
It is a church record, a young man who ”died from masturbation, from which he could not obstain,
allthough all remedies were used”.
Why was this post popular? Apart from the fact, that something to do with sex may allways be
interesting.
- The users became engaged (they helped each other read, and interpret the post)
- The content was interesting from a cultural point of view
- The content gave a very clear and and concrete example of moral in the 19th. Century
- It was an example on ”how to find more” in a type of record, that many users use frequently
- It describes – with a few scentences – a sad fate of a real person all can feel connected to
- The post acknowledged and hightlighted the find of a real-life user. (i.e. the post was not found by
the archives)
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8. Some Danish archives use Flickr at the moment.
None are yet on Flickr Commons, and a common charachteristic is, that most have their items
copyrighted.
There is an ongoing debate in Denmark at the moment about copyright. One element is, that archival
material may contain photos etc. that are ”works of art” or the like, and therefore subject to
copyright on behalf of the original producer.
Another discussion is wheter or not an institution can or should claim a ”copyright” for something,
which could also be argued to be in Public Domain. Is it fair to try and claim a ”copyright”, if we scan
a record, which is eg.180 years old, or more? There are two strong positions, one for an open
attitude and one for a more traditional view on the issue. The latter also partly based on the wish to
sell copies of pictures etc.
So, right now, not many archives uses CC licensing
For now, State Archives use Attribution, Non Commercial, Share Alike as main license.
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9. Just as with Facebook, it is necessary to monitor and keep track of acitivities related to our Flickr-
precenses.
Let me again share an example from the Danish State Archives. Our most viewed pictures – apart
from old maps - either have a root in something newsworthy (such as images from the Titanic, in
april 2012) or they are part of an activity, such as the set on inventions, to which a new photo was
added each Wednesday, as part of an activity on Facebook and Twitter.
In general, there is much room for improvement when using Flickr, both for us and other institutions.
Most archives do not tag their pictures or submit them to relevant groups. Both are crucial aspects of
using the social photosite.
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10. As is seen on the slide, several archives also use Twitter – but very much on-and-off, and most not
on a regular basis. However, Danish archives do participate in various Twitter-events, such as
”askarchivists day” and the like. A number of archives got started on Twitter in order to participate in
events of this kind.
The content on YouTube is at the present scarce, with the archives in Køge and State Archives as
exceptions. There is probably no doubt, that there is room for much more in this field: film on
specific topics, films used for guidance (e.g. for other to embed too) as well as ”news-films” and
similar.
Apart from the services mentioned, individual archives use and try various platforms, that they find
appealing and useful. Aalborg City Archives, which besides Køge Archives is also worth watching, is –
as the only archive up to now - trying out Instagram http://web.stagram.com/n/aalborg_stadsarkiv/.
The State Archives has launched a livestreaming channel on bambuser
http://bambuser.com/channel/Statens+Arkiver and is also trying issuu for anual reports etc.
http://issuu.com/statens_arkiver/docs/aarsberetning_for_statens_arkiver_2011
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11. So – in short, this could sum up the topic ”Archives and social” at the present in Denmark.
Usage of social networking sites is mostly Facebook, the number of likers are around 500, and we
often tend to focus a lot on the institution. Either by trying to market physical activites and products,
or by promoting examples from the collections. But there are other ways of using the ressources. For
instance, Aalborg City Archives – picking up on a popular trend - created a FB-page with the title
”You can only call yourself a true aalborgian, when you know that…”. What people where supposed to
know was pieces of local history trivia, posted by both the archive and the users of the page. The
page (which is no longer in regular use) gained about twice as many likers as the page, focused on
the institution (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Man-kan-kun-kalde-sig-en-%C3%A6gte-
aalborgenser-n%C3%A5r-man-ved-at/120102034679274?fref=ts )
And interesting aspect is however to recognize, that there may be a lot of other groups, pages etc.
that deal with the topics people use archives for: genealogy, old photos, local history etc. Why do
we not participate much more here, or try to establish prescences around topics, that people find
relevant?
A thought: Are we i fact using the ”social web” to build new silo´s for the institutions more than we
use it to become more social?
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12. Sharing is an other trend, that is important among Danish heritage institutions right now. Many
archives have databeses etc. available on the web. For instance, one of the online-services from The
State Archives is a large site with more than 18 milllion documents online, free to search and use.
However, this is not the kind of service, I mean by ”sharing”.
We are used to think, that when we make records digitally available, the user in the other end is
human. This is changing rapidly, and the user, can just as well be a, application – a machine – with
its own endusers. This is a situation, which heritage institutions must be preparing for. In october
2012 the first Danish hackathon on cultural heritage was hosted by the Danish Heritage Agency, The
Royal Library, The Danish State Archives and The National Museum of Denmark. After a line of
ignite-talks about creative commons, wikipedia, free online ressources for schools, crowdsourcing etc.
the actual hacking took place over 2 days. The institutions presented datasets, that were ”hackable”,
and a number of developers created new services and presentations from the content. The tumblr of
the event has much more information http://hack4dk.tumblr.com/ as does the team Code United,
who won the hackathon, using data from the Danish Heritage Agency.
http://kulturognaturreise.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/winning-a-hackathon-whats-next/
We have to set our content much more free – and provide open API´s and webservices to whatever
stuff we publish.´This may be a particular challenge for archives, because many of us were
frontrunners in getting stuff ”on the internet”. So we have databases and ressources build for
another generation, where genuine sharing hadn´t really been invented yet. In order to make
content both finable, shareable and nerdfriendly for reuse, there is a large task ahead.
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13. Danish archives are no strangers to crowdsourcing. In fact, archives have been crowdsourcing on a
large scale for several years, in most types of institutions. The picture shows the recent 20ieth
”birthday” of the project, that has resulted in Danish Demographical Database -
http://www.ddd.dda.dk/
More pictures from the event – which among other things involved a huge birthdaycake with candles
a census imprinted on it – can be found at the State Archives´ Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/statensarkiver/sets/72157631961168962/with/8166807867/
DDD is a free, online database, which contains more than 15 million usergenerated posts. At the
recent reception the two ”supercrowsourcers” were congratulated - Lotte keyed in all 1.044.280
posts, where as Erik proofread 1.172.256 posts. An awsome – but far from being the only - example
of collaboration between archives and their users.
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14. Many archives have activities in community- or crowdsourcing, and more are on their way.
These are just examples of recent, or ongoing projects.
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15. One of the archives who have conducted major projects with more that 1. mio posts, is the
Copenhagen City Archives.
The ”Politiets Registerblade” at http://www.politietsregisterblade.dk/ was inititated by a group of
genealogical societies, and started as collaboration between the societies and the archives.
The goal was to digitize, index (and transscribe) a registration of copenhageners, carried out by the
police fra 1893 – 1923, when social security index was established.
For the first time, an archive also did a survey and a report to investigate, what motivates people
who participate in a crowdsourcing project. A slide fra the presentation of the full report is at
http://www.slideshare.net/politietsregisterblade/christa-brnd-manto-evaluering-af-
politietsregisterbladedk-ved-etnolog-christa-brnd? . Interesting findings were, amon other tings, that
it is the topic or the project, that motivates. Not the chance to ”help” a public institution, such as an
archive. The volunteers like to use the archives (mostly for genealogy) and are very motivated by the
chance to help others with an interest, that is similar to their own.
So, in crowdsourcing, we need to stand on common ground with the users, respect and acknowledge
motivations and approach for each other. We need to collaborate and facilitate.
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16. a) This goes for most heritage institutions
We are not at all good enough at creating a connection between online/onsite, and especially not
at doing it in realtime
b) There ate still lots of things to be tested, when it comes to guidance.
For instance - no danish archives are using or testing technologies like chat, skype or hangouts
yet
c) Crowdsourcing is becoming more and more of a strategy for making records more accesible –
indexed, transcribed etc.
But it is also becomming the basis of a new – much more equal – relationship between archives
and their users. This challenges the way, we ususally percieve ourselves as institutions.
d) The nerdfriendliness may be about to become a mantra for heritage institutions – not only
archives.
There is a strong focus on the need of open API´s and webservices
e) Not many archives have mobile offers, and when they do, it is often ifo-apps like ”Document of
the Day etc”.
It is necessary to combine mobile and social in new ways – for instance concering scanning,
photos, transcribing and thus bringing on and offline together. Another element is, that archival
services need to be responsive, so that users are able to access them via a larger variety of
devices.
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17. Thanks a lot for your attention
Sorry it´s not in German ☺
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