Beyond Preservation: Embracing Participatory and Accessible Practices in the Archive

Sarah Anne Mcdonagh ., Laura Aguiar

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Resum

As the rate of digitalisati on of archival material conti nues to grow, accessibility
to important historical records is a pressing concern for the heritage sector.
Traditi onally, trained professionals have provided transcripti ons of archival
material. This arti cle presents a new initi ati ve in Northern Ireland, in which a
group of blind and parti ally blind people were invited to work on transcripti ons
of archival material from the Public Record Offi ce of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
as part of the CollabArchive project (2022). Four parti cipants with varying
degrees of blindness were trained on how to transcribe audio and audiovisual
material from PRONI’s collecti on. Drawing on the concept of “access as a
conversati on” (Romero-Fresco/Dangerfi eld 2022), an individual access plan
was created in consultati on with each volunteer. In this paper, we will present
the project, and its aims, aft er which we will detail the training, technical
soluti ons and workfl ows followed, which facilitated volunteers in their
archival work. Drawing on refl ecti ons from the authors as trainer and project
coordinator, as well as those of volunteers, we will locate this initi ati ve within
the wider fi eld of parti cipatory accessibility (Di Giovanni 2018a), highlighti ng
the evolving role of the end user, as they move beyond the role of consumer
to producer of accessible content. Finally, we propose future research avenues
and parti cipatory practi ces that challenge traditi onal noti ons of the end user
as a passive receptor of informati on and instead highlight their potenti al as
access service providers.
Idioma originalAnglès
Pàgines (de-a)53-70
Nombre de pàgines21
RevistaI-LanD Journal - Identity, Language and Diversity
DOIs
Estat de la publicacióPublicada - 2023

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