prior projects

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Principal Funder: University of California Pacific Rim Research Project

Project personnel: Anne Gilliland, UCLA, PI; Sue McKemmish, Monash University, PI; Zhang Bin, Renmin University of China, co-PI. Graduate student assistants: Yang Lu and Kelvin White

The Pluralizing the Archival Paradigm: A Needs Assessment for Archival Education in Pacific Rim Communities, (PacRim) Project, 2005-2007, comprised a series of planning research and development  activities to promote the development of culturally and politically  sensitive education of qualified archival professionals in Pacific Rim  communities, especially those which have no local archival education  infrastructure; and to incorporate the interests, needs and  cultural beliefs and practices of diverse communities into existing,  predominantly Eurocentric educational programs in the Pacific Rim area.   

Its key objectives  were: 1) to identify key educational needs for specific regions in the  Pacific Rim; 2) to identify what might be optimal delivery mechanisms  for archival education in different communities and settings; and 3) to  develop a set of recommendations for existing programs to ensure that  they better address the diverse needs of a student base that may be  drawn from across the Pacific Rim, as well as local indigenous and  ethnic communities

Principal Funders: The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC); and The National Science Foundation.

US Team Co-Directors: Philip Eppard, SUNY ALbany; Anne Gilliland, UCLA

InterPARES 1 & 2, 1996-2007 were the first two in a series of three multidisciplinary, international projects in which archival scholars, computer engineering scholars, national archival institutions and private industry representatives collaborated to develop the theoretical and methodological knowledge required for the permanent preservation of authentic records created in electronic systems. It was succeeded by the InterPARES Trust.

Principal Funder: The National Science Foundation,  2005-2007 

Project personnel: Sharon Traweek,  Department of History, UCLA, PI; Anne Gilliland, Department of  Information Studies, UCLA, co-PI 

This project built upon the work of  a group of scientists from the US, including UCLA, who have been actively engaged with Japanese colleagues in the organization of multiple projects for several decades, including the design and conduct of experiments at KEK (Japan's National High Energy Accelerator Organization). The  goal of the project was to collect oral histories from crucial global cohorts of high energy physicists, and preserve and make them available within a digital archive developed at KEK  and UCLA. Collecting oral histories of cohorts who have worked together on specific projects or who have been members of an active network of colleagues provides a significant  contribution to our understanding of how such global cohorts and networks have participated in the development of this distributed, but cohesive international community of scientists. 

Principal Funders: UCLA Academic Senate, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)' Information Society Program

Project personnel: Jean-François Blanchette, Department of Information Studies, UCLA, PI; Bruno Bachimont, Université Technologique de Compiègne, Scientific Manager, Institut National d'Audiovisuel

This project's approach to the problem of  preserving digital objects such as videogames was founded on a theory that envisions the archival process as composed of two fundamental elements: on the one  hand, the transmission of the physical object proper; on the other hand,  the transmission of the interpretive tradition associated with the  object. That is, the long-term preservation of any cultural work  involves, in effect, the development and transmission of an associated  interpretive tradition, against the progressive decontextualization of  the work affected by the passage of time. As no object is ever self-intelligible, preservation implies that the object be repeatedly  “read”, that is made accessible to collective memory through the  interpretive tradition associated with that object. The continuous performance  (reading) of any cultural work is made possible by the dynamic exchange  between the technical choices inherent in any preservation method and  the interpretative tradition that makes that work intelligible.

Through prior funding from the CNRS, we  developed a preservation tool for France’s IRCAM for electronic  music performances. This project sought to extend that tool to the  preservation of other digital objects, beginning with videogames, a  culturally rich digital object and thus, legitimate object of cultural  preservation. Videogames have no associated tradition of abstraction,  that is, the best that can be done is to (a) keep the original machine  and original software or (b) keep the software and emulate the machine).  

Principal Funder: CNRS

MUSTICA, is an international collaboration of  information scientists, musicologists and archivists was established to  research issues of digital music preservation. MUSTICA involves  researchers at two French organizations, the Groupe de Recherches  Musicales (GRM), a research center within the Institut National de  l'Audiovisuel (INA), and the Institut de Recherche et Coordination  Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), the University of British Columbia, and the  University of California, Los Angeles (Jean-François Blanchette and Anne Gilliland). MUSTICA is supported by the  French Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) through its  "Archivage et Patrimoine Documentaire" funding initiative.

Principal Funder: Institute of Museum and Library Services

Personnel: MOAC staff; Anne Gilliland, Department of Information Studies, UCLA; Layna White, Hammer Museum, UCLA

The Museums and the  Online Archive of California II User Evaluation (MOAC II), 2004-2006 examined digital museum content for use in education and  research. MOAC II advanced MOAC (1998-2004), a major  collaboration involving integration of collection descriptions and  images using community-based standards. MOAC was the museum component of  the Online Archive of California (OAC).