The Repeal: anti-militarist journal (1913-1914)

Published from March 1913 to August 1914, the Repeal was the journal of the militant Passive Resisters Union, an organization against militarism that formed in Addignton, CHCH in 1912. For a PDF on the PRU click here.

Some (more) thoughts on activism, class struggle and material needs

In my last post on organization I raised a few points about the idea of organizing around material needs. As I noted in that post, one of the main things Beyond Resistance (BR) wanted to do as a collective was to move beyond an activist approach; to base what we did around the material needs and interests of our members. But what does this actually mean? And what did/would that look like in practice? It's one thing to put such a strategy down on paper, and quite another to make such a strategy a reality.

In this post I want to try and expand on these points. To do this I'll talk a little bit about what we did not want to do (by quoting from articles addressing the problems of activism) and explore the idea of (class) struggle based on material needs and interests. Past activities that I thought the collective did well will be mentioned, and I'll also try to frame what my own personal activity would look like based on these ideas. Again, this is far from new ground, and the ground I'll cover is pretty focused on my own personal and regional sphere. So bear with me as I struggle to write from this personal framework (without sounding trite or individualistic)!


Trying to give up activism...
The experiences of various people in BR, and a text written in 1999 called Give Up Activism, had a huge impact on the scope and activity of our collective. Some of us had been through painful experiences with informal spaces and a lack of accountability/responsibility—'playground anarchism' and 'headless chickenism' were two things we definitely did not want to reproduce. We saw these issues as being the product of an 'activist mentality' (forgive me for the excessive quotes, but they sum it up way better than I could):

"By 'an activist mentality' what I mean is that people think of themselves primarily as activists and as belonging to some wider community of activists. The activist identifies with what they do and thinks of it as their role in life, like a job or career. In the same way some people will identify with their job as a doctor or a teacher, instead of it being something they just happen to be doing, it becomes an essential part of their self-image.

The activist is a specialist or an expert in social change. To think of yourself as being an activist means to think of yourself as being somehow privileged or more advanced than others in your appreciation of the need for social change, in the knowledge of how to achieve it and as leading or being in the forefront of practical struggle to create this change."

"Activism is based on [the] misconception that it is only activists who do social change - whereas of course class struggle is happening all the time"

The logical result of this leads to single issue actions with little on-going networking (at least not any way that contributes to relationships outside of those in the group/s themselves), and an ideological or moral-based practice. What I mean by this is that struggle can become a battle of ideas: a sort of appeal to the wider world to take action by feeling a sense of outrage, or more positively, through being shown idealised or hypothetical alternatives ("in Spain in 1936, over a million people organised life along anarchist principles... so you should to!"). I don't want to dismiss the role of such arguments. But on their own, or void of a specific context, they often miss their mark (there's plenty of reasons why this happens under and I won't go into them, as it's been said before).

Instead, I think that people become active/radicalised by events or material conditions that directly affect them (and I don't mean this in a crude economic determinist sense). Explanations that make sense of those experiences often come during, or after, such experiences. Sure, that's a big generalization, but if I think back to my own experience it rings true (after a string of supermarket jobs as a youth, it was the nightshift at an electronics manufacturing plant that prompted me to learn about socialism and Marx. I felt alienation firsthand, and soon realised the cultural privilege I had as a student while my co-workers were overwhelmingly non-pakeha mothers on minimum wage. It was certainly a wake up call).

The activist/moral approach can influence how we view what sites of struggles 'are the most pressing' or 'has the most potential' for social revolution. This can be problematic because it can often lead to us taking the position of the 'outsider' (ie not part of the working class), or place sites of struggle outside of our own lives. We get drawn onto a political/ideological level at the expense of solidarity around lived, material needs (which are shaped by capital, patriarchy etc). This happens even within class struggle circles (although about early SolFed, this quote pretty much sums up early BR):

"So we started doing various ‘class struggle’ things. Going along to picket lines. Writing propaganda about class struggles. Leafletting. We actually had a platformist member at one point who suggested doing a local newsletter and delivering it door-to-door in our areas. We did one issue and abandoned it. We weren’t really happy with the activity of the group, but couldn’t put our finger on why. It felt a lot like activism, only with ‘class struggle’ substituted for GM crops or the arms trade....

Fundamentally, although we were theoretically committed to a ‘politics of everyday life’, our politics had nothing to do with our everyday lives! Class struggle was something that happened to other people. Going down to a picket line at 5am to distro a leaflet was barely any different to going to get on the roof of an arms company or trash a field of GM crops. So we started thinking about whether it could be done better, or whether being in a political group was basically just activism for people with better politics."

Class struggle and material needs
In contrast to an activist approach, an in recognition of relatively low periods of struggle at the moment, people organizing around material needs in their own lives are more likely to lead to the kind of ruptures needed to challenge capitalist relations. Time for another quote:

"Capitalism is based on work; our struggles against it are not based on our work but quite the opposite, they are something we do outside whatever work we may do. Our struggles are not based on our direct needs (as for example, going on strike for higher wages); they seem disconnected, arbitrary. Our 'days of action' and so forth have no connection to any wider on-going struggle in society. We treat capitalism as if it was something external, ignoring our own relation to it."

The key for me in this quote is the term 'relation'. It's our relation to capital, our material experience of exploitation (and in turn, what we need to rectify this exploitation) that is important to focus on:

"The struggle then, is to build a revolutionary movement grounded in our everyday lives, which builds working class self-organisation and autonomy, which will require organisation, but which does not become fixated on the building of particular organisations or caught up in its own activity. A movement which realises and constantly reaffirms that we are all involved by nature of our material position in society, and that we who sit through meetings and read about critical theory are not more advanced, nor have more of the answers than those who, probably with good reason, don't take those actions."

Now although we in the working class have a shared experience of exploitation on quite a wide level and in various ways (at work, when buying food to survive, renting etc), this fact isn't that helpful in terms of defining a strategy. What might be relevant class struggle to me as a white male could be completely different to the needs of a single mother. Claims that our interests are universal because of our class is not enough. Instead, a focus on the material needs in our own lives—and then trying to organize with others of the same material interests—allows us to concretely identify our lived experience of exploitation and to act in an informed way. In this way form follows content, rather the other way around.

Such an approach recognizes the fact that people will engage in class struggle in various ways and at different sites. For example, as new parents, my partner and I are having very interesting discussions around unwaged work and the reproduction of labour power. That is a site of struggle relevant to my partner's current experience as a mother, and involves a capitalist division of labor informed by patriarchy. Having an understanding of their relationship (or their intersectionality) in material terms, really helps.

Of course if organizing around one's material needs is taken in the strictest sense, there is a danger of limiting oneself to isolated fights or relationships. I guess it's better to think of this approach as a way of beginning; a stepping stone in building relations and circulating struggle amongst similar class interests. As Selma James writes, "to grasp the class interest when there seems not one but two, three, four, each contradicting the other, is one of the most difficult revolutionary tasks, in theory and practice, that confront us." Locating our own struggles as a first step gives us a better chance to grasp these interests.


In practice
Despite the fact that BR never really shed the anarchist propaganda group activity, there were moments when the 'politics of everyday life' approach informed our practice and was put into action. One of the very first major struggles we were involved in was around cuts to public services, when community post offices in a number of communities were scheduled for closure. In this case the community post office of some of our members was due to be shut. A shared interest with their neighbors, and through visible activity in their community, meant those BR members were not outsiders from an outside group. It was based in the everyday lives of the BR members. As a result, our flyers were welcomed, our positions and comments in public forums were listened to with great interest, and I genuinely think we helped to both push aspects of the struggle in more libertarian forms (through calling assemblies and reigning in the power of self-appointed leaders, and by having clear class analysis on why the cuts were happening). Because of this material interest our propaganda had a very real context to draw from, and helped when we started to form connections with other communities in struggle across the city.

In that struggle, BR as an organization worked how I would like to see it functioning now: as a place for comrades to bring their material experience and struggle to the collective in order to discuss, theorize and plan strategy. Part discussion group, part support group, but focused on external praxis in our own lives (although not necessarily as a collective).

So what does that mean for my own material experience of capital, right now? Although I'm a part time-student and mainly a stay-at-home dad at the moment, the most obvious sites of struggle for me to be active in is my workplace and my neighborhood. However I only work one day a week, the workplace itself is small, and a very paternalistic/we're all family culture exists (despite a number of issues that I take note of and talk to co-workers about). Tactically it's probably not the best site of struggle.

That leaves activity in my neighborhood. Where I live is suffering as a result of the Christchurch earthquakes—not in terms of physical damage but through gentrification and massive rent hikes. Rent has jumped by over 26% in the wider city alone, but our proximity to the city has made it a prime location for the development of small businesses and retail. As a result, working people are being driven out in the need for cheaper rental houses. There are community action groups that have been around since the quakes, yet there's also space for a local SolNet or Renters Union. Both options have advantages and disadvantages, but the former would be the easiest to get directly involved in (despite their shortcomings). My biggest hurdle is time—parenting makes what little time I have quite precious and is often filled up with doing things to feel sane (like writing, reading or putting down a brew). It feels selfish writing this, but if I want to be able to sustain struggle in the long-term then I need to think about what I can and can't do at this point in time.

Ultimately, whatever I do, it's unlikely to be very dramatic. Struggling with others around material needs requires a lot more commitment and collective responsibility than most activist campaigns (taking on a shared landlord is not something you'd want to do half-heartedly), so again, maybe now is just not the right time. Nor would it look dramatic: the slow, steady and under-the-radar efforts we need to make with those of shared material interests can often seem like 'doing nothing.' But it's better than 'headless chickenism', and despite bouts of pessimism, surely better than doing nothing at all. As pointed out in this excellent article:

"to do nothing and to think that we must wait for a general upsurge in class struggle, or for 'ordinary workers' to become more radical is in fact to construct a new division between us [with political analysis etc] as a privileged sector that understands struggle and the average worker who does not, but now in reverse of the traditional Leninist vanguard we must deliberately do nothing, rather than lead, because of this division. We have, instead, to see ourselves as part of the working class and that revolutionary activity will only come because of a drive towards that from the working class."

Postscript
After publishing this article, I was asked why I had left out my role as a stay-at-home dad from my current experience. I think this was partly because I saw myself as isolated in this role (I know one other stay-at-home dad); but also because of capitalist-patriarchy, such a struggle isn't given as much time or importance. Considering I've read a bit of James, Della Costa etc, not including this major sphere of my life was pretty shitty.

So when a similar question came up on a listserv I subscribe to, I added some thoughts. Here they are, where they should have been originally.

I take A's question ("Given all the recent talk about critiquing activism, how do you think someone who is a primary caregiver with a toddler can be involved in revolutionary politics?) as: what, if we are to base our activism/struggle/whatever in our everyday life, can a primary care do? As a primary caregiver of a toddler I can definitely relate to this question. In fact, when I didn't mention it in my recent writing I was pulled up by P: I'd described what my workplace or community struggle might look like, but not my material condition as a primary caregiver.

I wonder if this is because there aren't many models to learn from, as traditionally it has been seen as something done next to other political work (ie once you leave the kids somewhere you can then get involved in stuff). Yes, it's becoming more recognised that parenting is a political act and important work. And that childcare is essential for others to join in. But it still seems like that child-raising work is separated from revolutionary politics/class struggle (my article is a case in point). ie parents should come to our struggles and we'll provide a means so that they can (ie childcare), rather than struggling with parents where they're at materially under capitalism.

What if we re-framed the question. For example, as a primary caregiver, how can I organise with others who share the same material interests as me? What would that struggle look like? What could we do to fuck with capitalism in the role assigned to us? Here I think we could learn from the Wages for Housework movement, and ideas around unwaged work and class struggle.

One example they give is how capitalism would grind to a halt if all primary caregivers forced capitalism to deal with the work of caring for children. Child care and schools are just some ways in which capital ensures that children are out of the way so that workers are freed up to continue their dance with capital—to continue to work and be productive. What would happen if we organised other parents, childcare workers and teachers in order to throw a spanner in that? I've read of 'kid-in's' in the UK where caregivers and their children occupied workplaces around issues of care and unwaged work. What would a strike or caregivers look like? Could it be just as effective as shutting down industry, if it forced industry to deal with shitty nappies, screaming babies and reproducing labour?

Interesting to think about, as before I echoed the sentiment of G about class struggle only being in industry and the workplace. Now I think more broadly about class and how capitalism functions, and that's definitely thanks to becoming a parent and reading more radical/marxist feminism : )

Signal 02: Editor's Round Up (from Icky)

After a tough two years (and many gentle reminders from the PM crew) Signal 02 is finally finished. Signal is ongoing project between Josh MacPhee and me, with the aim of documenting international art, graphics, and culture tied to social movements around the world.
Signal 01 had six features: Dutch comix anti-hero Red Rat; graffiti artist Impeach; a photo essay on Adventure Playgrounds; the designer Rufus Segar & Anarchy Magazine; the Taller Tupac Amaru; and posters from the propaganda brigades of Mexico in 1968. With issue 2, we wanted to expand the focus a little and try to cover some new areas and struggles. Here are some highlights:
Røde Mor
A few years back, Josh and I took a rambling trip through Europe trying to collect material for Signal. In Copenhagen, Josh gave a slide-show about political posters including a Danish poster by an (at the time) unknown artist. We were informed that image was made by Dea Trier Mørch, a relatively well-known Danish printmaker who was part of a cultural collective called Røde Mor (Danish for Red Mother). Røde Mor's musical wing, a rock circus/band was quite popular in their time, hitting high in the pop charts and playing festivals. Røde Mor's graphic section made posters for protests, unions, and international struggles. Our hosts played us some of their music, and we were intrigued enough to take a journey to a poster museum in Aarhus that housed (and also sold) a collection of Røde Mor's graphic output. It turned out that the poster museum was in the midst of a historical village (as in re-enactments of old Danish living and industry) and had mostly old cigarette advertisements displayed.

Slightly confused by this, Josh and I took the train back to Copenhagen and the next day, in a book store, stumbled upon some graphic novels and portfolios of Røde Mor's (that was a bit of a running theme of that trip: any effort to actively seek something out met in failure, but luck, curiosity, and greed for books delivered a wealth of new discoveries). At that time, I fell in love with their work.
The graphic novel that I found, BILLEDROMAN, tells three wordless stories from 1973. The first about a Vietnamese woman taking up arms against the Americans, the second about the coup against Allende in Chile, and the third follows a Danish factory worker as she becomes radicalized (the cover image on Signal 02 is from this story). Each story was done by a different artist (Yukari Ochiai, Thomas Kruse, and Dea Trier Mørch, respectively). All were made with one color block prints. Their individual work is distinctive (after a bit of familiarity it's easy to tell who did what), but they feel complimentary to each other. There's also something warm to much of their work. They were attempting to revive the idea of proletarian art; so while the themes are confrontational, advocating revolution, they also feel very inclusive, playful, and sympathetic.
I feel like I shouldn't play favorites within the collective, but I am especially influenced by the work of Dea Trier Mørch, who did the third story mentioned above. Her images are simple with strong line-work, and at the same time highly descriptive & evocative despite their minimalism. She was also a well known author, her most popular book Vinterbørn (Winter's Child, 1976) which she also illustrated, was an experimental feminist novel about childbirth. It was a bestseller and was later made into a film (it is also the only book of hers translated into English, easy to find and cheap).
Kasper Ostrup Frederiksen is an acquaintance of Josh's, a Dane living in England. He also shared a fascination with Røde Mor, and had done some research on them in the past. We contacted him about doing a piece on the collective and he quickly obliged (considering that we're at least a year behind deadline on this issue, I still feel a little guilty with how quickly Kasper got us his piece- sorry Kasper!). It tells the story of the collective as well as having translations of several of their manifestoes, which gives a much rounder view of who they were and what they believed in:

Red Mother is the revolution's mother
The mother of the oppressed, the weak and the orphans
Red Mother waits for you, won't forget you and keeps the food warm
Red Mother is a wild and ferocious lioness
Red Mother walks with an olive branch in its beak
Red Mother is a black sheep and, also, a red flag


Freedom Broadsides
Freedom is an anarchist publication that began in 1886(!). In Signal, we have a collection of old broadsides that we think were used as advertising for new issues of the newspaper. We're not sure where the advertisements were posted, consultation with English anarcho-historians only led to educated speculation (who guessed that maybe they were posted on the sides of news-stands). I like to picture dedicated cadres of street vendors wearing them as sandwich board signs with headlines that read: "Government and The People; Shattering the Dumb Gods," "The Crime of Crimes; Capitalism Condemned," and (my favorite) "All Governments Are Robbers! Why Do You Elect Them?" Most of these date from 1900 to 1910. They work as both a history of the movement and as a fine example of type craft in the early twentieth century.
Josh found these at the Kate Sharpley Library, and when he did, he grunted with delight, which caused me to walk over and see what all the fuss was about.


Oaxacan Street Art in a Mexican Context
We were both eager to get some writing from Deborah Caplow, an art historian, professor, and author in the Pacific NW. I knew of her from her excellent book on Mexican printmaker (and founding member of Taller de Grafica Popular) Leopold Mendez.
Originally Josh and I wanted to see if we could dig a little deeper into the TGP's art process. There are bits of information of how they worked in various books about individual artists within the collective, but the only books on the collective itself are not available in English. Our understanding of their collective practice is that they would decide on general themes and images for a poster as a group, and assign the task to one of the artists within the TGP. The artist would bring back a rough sketch of their idea and it would then be open to collective criticism and adjustment. Sometimes entire works would be redone by different artists within the group. This process, while rare these days, isn't unheard of in art collectives (it is however, ironically, standard practice in commercial/applied art); but at the time (1930s/1940s) this way of working was a pretty wild idea. Josh contacted Deborah and she countered with an article she wanted to do that placed the posters and graffiti that had appeared around the uprising in Oaxaca within a context of Mexican political print making. Which sounded excellent.
Mexican prints, especially Mexican political prints, are very distinctive. There's a richness to the imagery, and often an almost-impossibly skilled use of line work to give the images great depth and movement. Amongst the circle of printmakers that make up Justseeds (the art collective Josh and I are both members of) the influence of the TGP is probably second to none. One of my favorite prints from the TGP starts out this article, Leopold Mendez' Deportacion a la muerte, which is a haunting, high-contrast, print that anguished over the traffic of human lives to the Nazis' death camps in WWII.
The more contemporary work in the article is also quite stunning, most of it done by the collective ASARO. A few years back I saw a presentation by one of the members of this group, who had brought up a pile of prints which had been wheat pasted in the streets of Oaxaca while things there were still quite volatile. My friends and I were blown away by the quality and creativity of the work we saw. The article in Signal shows the strong lineage from Posada to the TGP to these contemporary artists.


The Yamaga Manga
We contacted Keisuke Narita of the Irregular Rhythm Asylum and the Center for International Research on Anarchism in Tokyo about getting some work in this issue from Japan. We didn't have anything in mind in particular and left it open. He sent us various examples of design, old and new, and what jumped out at the time were couple of pages of illustration with narration (comics or manga) painted in muted watercolors. When we expressed an interest in these, Kei informed us that they were made by Taiji Yamaga, a well-known figure in Japanese anarchist and Esperantist circles in Japan, near the end of his life. He made them as a visual reference when he was writing down his memories. They were titled "Sketches From Memory," and they do have a dreamy, staccato flow to them, reminiscent of the ways that memories flow together in bursts.
The narrative covers the tumultuous political life of anarchists in Japan in the early twentieth century. They are beautifully drawn and highly expressive. These were translated by a team in Montreal, led by Adrienne Hurley who has translated other work for PM Press and is also (I believe and hope) working on a history of Japanese Anarchism.


Cranking the Gestetner
Lincoln Cushing wrote a piece about a printing press, the Gestetner, that was popular with radicals in the late 1960s up to the mid-'70s. The Gestetner press could produce pieces that looked better then the low-end mimeographs, could produce faster quantities than hand silk-screening, and was simpler (and less expensive) then a full offset press. This is the back side of art production for political movements, working out how to make things look good, how to make things fast, and how to do it without it dominating your life or forcing you to start a business printing wedding invitations to support printing radical chap-books about free love. The article shows the influence of one old printing technology (Josh originally described the Gestetner to me as an evolutionary dead-end, the cro-magnon of printing presses) and how this technology was used: fully, gleefully, exploited by artists in the movement. Accompanying the article, of course, are several examples of amazing posters made on Gestetner presses.


Malangatana's Fire
Malangatana Valente Nguenha was a Mozambican artist and revolutionary; active and prodcuing art beginning in the 1950s, through the revolution (overthrowing the Portuguese colonizers in 1974), and up to his death in 2011. The article in Signal, we hope, will be one of many covering relatively unknown (in the US) cultural work from Africa.
Malangatana worked in many mediums. We feature mostly his paintings, which are a riot of color, dense, sometimes grotesque, sometimes exuberant. Malangatana was part of a revolution that succeeded and there's an interesting anecdote in the article where he is collaborating with exiled Chilean artists on a mural. Malangatana's work is described as sad and 'anguished', while the Chileans work is hopeful and exhortatory. Malangatana's art was not propaganda (though I respect propagandists, don't get me wrong), but intensely honest. You get the feeling from the article that he felt a great responsibility to be a voice of the people, and it was not his concern how that fit into any particular political platform. He has beautiful line work in his paintings, they flirt with abstraction but doesn't quite go all the way.
The article was written by Judy Seidman who wrote and edited one of the essential books on political poster art: Red On Black: The Story of the South African Poster Movement. She was also a member of the Medu Arts Ensemble and is great artist and poster-maker in her own right.


Revolutionary Portugal
And finally we have piece from PM author Phil Mailer (Portugal: The Impossible Revolution?, about the Carnation Revolution in 1974). Following the revolution, artists and political parties took to the streets in abundance, promoting their own programs or platforms. By 1975 Mailer says that, "there was hardly an unpainted wall anywhere in Lisbon or in the rural towns across the country." The walls were open to any and all to use, so the visible output varied quite a bit. Some of the work is stylized, accomplished, almost slick with its messaging and aesthetic. Other murals are crude and didactic. But all of it (that I've seen, that we have pictures of) is brightly colored, almost exhilarated with possibility. What stands out to me with the Portuguese murals is the seemingly large influence that comics had on their aesthetics. Propaganda from the Eastern Bloc often showed workers as almost superhuman, well rounded men and women with giant hands wielding rifles, ploughs, sickles, and doves. The Portuguese version of the worker is a little different, looking more like Clark Kent in a pair of overalls, or even like Ziggy with an AK47. Anyway, nice stuff and it leaves me hungry to see more.
So that's Signal 02. I think it's a tight issue with a lot of really great content (I'm biased I suppose).

After it's all said and done, there're a few things I notice about this issue. One is that we we're seeking out information about collective work. Part of this, I'm sure, is personal: we both work collectively on art and there's some curiosity about how other folks have made this work in the past. Within our art collective (Justseeds) and in many folks I know there's some trepidation about producing truly collective work. I've described the way that (we believe) the Taller de Grafica Popular operated and people have groaned and sighed, "That sound like a nightmare." I imagine it's a mix of bad experience with collectives (infoshops anyone?), and a perceived idea of Maoist, Orwellian, Weathermen-esque brutal self-criticism sessions. Maybe it's that I know a lot of anarchists or maybe it's that we're Americans, prizing the individual and individual voice. It makes me a little sad to hear those groans as collective work sparks the imagination in ways that are different than individual work. Røde Mor, the TGP, and APPO are great examples of collective work where the individual (the human aspect) is highly visible but it seems to me that work stands stronger due to the connections that are made within the group (both aesthetically and ideologically).
With Signal, we are also seeking out different graphic and aesthetic traditions from around the world. There's something very different about how art and ideas are expressed depending on where it's made, work from Japan and work from the US and work from Mexico are qualitatively different. All cultural expression has different lineages and influences that shape how producers choose to express themselves. With Signal, we are hoping to explore how work is made, why choices were made in output, and what effect the artwork had on a particular movement or struggle (and conversely what effect the movement had on the artwork). As we stated in the intro to Signal:

Art, design, graphics, and culture have been important tools for every social movement that has attempted to challenge the status quo. But not all tools are the same: we don’t use a nail gun to plant a garden, or a rake to fix the plumbing. We hope to broaden the visual discussion of possibility. Social movements have successfully employed everything from print- making to song, theatre to mural painting, graffiti to sculpture. We are internationalists. We are curious about the different graphic traditions and visual languages that exist throughout the world. We feel that broadening our cultural landscape will strengthen the struggle for equality and justice.
Postscript: I wrote this wrap-up to Signal 02 while it was still warm from the printers . . . Josh is out of contact somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains, so the "we" of this blog entry is really an "I", with a speculated (and educated) guess of the thoughts shared by my partner in all this, Josh. Mistakes, suppositions, and assumptions are all mine.
Originally posted on the PM Press Blog

Some (more) thoughts on organisation...

It's funny how one's own thoughts can be reflected back at you from the most random places.

The past six months or so have been quite a tough time for me in terms of my politics, or my collective anarchist/community activity. Being busy with life and my son (I'm a stay-at-home dad at the moment while I'm studying part time) means I simply can't get involved in the things that I'd like to right now. A little bit of conflict/change in the anarchist collective I'm involved with, a relatively low period of struggle in Christchurch (despite numerous issues facing the people of this city), and and my own slight burn out/re-evaluation of politics adds to the feeling of confusion and sometimes, outright pessimism.

So when a number of articles on organisation popped up on various websites, it was like finding my doubts manifested and shared. Articles from the US such as some thoughts on political organisation from Juan Conatz (with a valuable comments section), Gayge Operaista’s thoughts on exploitation, repression and self-organisation, and an excellent article on the Cautiously Pessimistic blog summed up a lot of what I had been thinking — the later especially.

It's hard for me to write about organisation at the moment because of my own personal shit (mentioned above) that's tied up with it. I also feel hypercritical writing about it because of these reasons. But I thought I'd record some thoughts nonetheless. They aren't as succinct as the links above, and they mainly relate to my localized experience.

First, a bit of background. I helped get Beyond Resistance (BR) off the ground with a number of anarchists around October 2009. At the time I firmly believed that a tight group of anarchists with a high level of ideological unity was what we needed to forward our political project, which was to get back to long-term workplace/community organising (rather than what we called 'mere reaction'). Whether we were successful with that or not is hard to say. We were involved in lots of projects and events, published some good texts, and were especially active during the initial weeks of the CHCH earthquakes. We helped spread the idea of Solnets in New Zealand (especially through some of our strategy papers and in forums on the West Coast) and started one in Christchurch.

Now, I'm not so sure about the need for a specific anarchist organisation. I've begun to think such groups tend to come at struggle from an ideological place, in terms of appealing to workers on the realm of ideas and morals. Of course we were engaging in struggles around material needs, but I still held to the idea that tighter org will crystalize our arguments, make them sharper and more visible/audible to those in the wider class. Despite arguing that we wanted BR to be based firmly in the struggle around the material needs of our members, we still never shook the mantles of an anarchist propaganda group.

Also, I reckon it's a question of who we work with. In the past I've looked to other anarchists with a similar agreement on principles as my base community. Yet surely this is an arbitrary and unhelpful thing, when compared with say, a community based on material and shared needs? What I mean is something like a Tenants Union of people in my area who share landlords, or as Cautiously Pessimistic points out, those who have a specifically shared experience of exploitation under capital. If class struggle is about building and strengthening relationships and self-activity, why did we as anarchists feel the need to build an anarchist group first, or that to do class struggle we needed a political org behind us — to do it as a political org? I'm not sure if what I'm trying to say makes sense, and maybe it's natural to organize with those you feel closest affinity with. I'm just questioning that particular framework with which we approached struggle.

I'm not anti-organisation, nor have I moved over to a position of pure spontaneity. I definitely think political education and cultural work is needed, and that having a group of peeps you can share your ideas and experiences with is a must: as a place to bounce ideas around practical actions in our lives/struggles. And this is the way BR is starting to operate right now — a place for its members to bring in their experiences of struggle, to discuss and then to put into practice. But at this moment in time, I would rather put any time and energy I had into projects other than an anarchist political project, such as a solnet, or into a tenants union. Only problem is these don't really exist, so building them would be a huge task.

What does that mean for BR? We've decided that the nature of our energy and focus right now means we can't (or won't) do the external stuff we used to do — you know, stuff a typical political org does (propaganda/flyers, evenings, meetings, calling pickets etc). Two years ago I would have slammed such a move as being nothing more than a talk shop; inward-focused and irrelevant. Now I'm not so sure. Groups like Recomposition have been valuable as models, and the discussions on libcom under Juan's text are very interesting (although in CHCH there is no IWW or 'mass' org to 'liquidate' into). I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Archives and Activism: Call for Papers

“The rebellion of the archivist against his normal role is not, as so many scholars fear, the politicizing of a neutral craft, but the humanizing of an inevitably political craft."

-- Howard Zinn "Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest," Vol. II, No. 2 (1977) of Midwestern Archivist.

The boundaries between "archivist" and "activist" have become increasingly porous, rendering ready distinctions between archivists (traditionally restricted to the preservation of records, maintaining accountability, and making critical information available to the communities they serve) and activists (who, with greater frequency, look to archives or adopt elements of archival practice as a means of documenting their struggles) virtually unsustainable. In the past year, archivists and citizen activists collaborated to document the Occupy Wall Street movement, and archivists committed to open government worked with the New York City Council to advocate for keeping the Municipal Archives as an independent city agency. While the apparent convergence of archival and activist worlds may appear a timely and relevant topic, these distinct communities often deliberate their roles separately with little dialogue.

The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York and the New School Archives and Special Collections are sponsoring a symposium to bring together a diverse group of archivists, activists, students, and theorists with the aim of facilitating discussion of their respective concerns. Among its proposed topics, the symposium will address potential roles that archivists may engage in as activists, as well as how archivists can assume a greater role in documenting and contributing toward social and political change.
Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

-Archivists documenting the work of activists and activist movements
-Activists confronting traditional archival practice
-Possible models for an emergent "activist archives"
-Methodologies for more comprehensively documenting activist
-Archivist and activist collaborations
-Community-led archives and repositories operating outside of the archival establishment
-Archives as sites of knowledge (re)production and in(ter)vention
-Relational paradigms for mapping the interplay of power, justice, and archives
-Critical pedagogy in the reference encounter
-Interrogating preconceptions and misunderstandings that obscure common goals

Date: Friday, October 12, 2012

Location: Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, The New School

All individual presentations will be 20 minutes long (10 page paper).
Submissions must include a title, name of author and institutional affiliation (if applicable), abstract (250 words max), and indication of technological requirements. Individual papers or entire panel proposals accepted.

Deadline for Proposals: Proposals should be emailed to admin@nycarchivists.org by August 1, 2012.

Looks interesting!

First draft of the cover of my next book...

Thanks to Icky for the illustration!

anARCHIVE: mock-up of an information retrieval system

The latest assignment for my Masters asked students to create a mock-up information retrieval system (IRS) of a collection of our choosing. It was to take the form of a proposal, and include information on metadata standards, how information about an item (or surrogates in the lingo) is retrieved (such as search, browsing, recall, precision etc) and 10 examples using a wiki or other means to illustrate our IRS in action.

I chose to catalog my zine collection as I'm sure I'll need to do it for Katipo or some other group down the track. It was cool because I got to look at examples of zine libraries around the world and how they cataloged, described and provided access to their zines. I also got to pretend that a functioning anarchist archive in CHCH existed by using a wiki!

Here's my assignment in PDF form, complete with links to 3 example zine collections (Bernard Zine Library, Anchor Archive Zine Library, Salt Lake City Zine Library) and my mock-up IRS, anARCHIVE. I post it because good examples of zine/anarchist archives in practice are hard to find or light on information around how they do things (except for the examples I used, which were great). I also think the metadata fields I came up with are pretty good (although my lecturer suggested I could have used more administrative metadata on when the record itself was created, updated, that sort of thing). Might come in handy for any radical groups out there wanting to catalog their stuff.


View proposal online or download from Issuu:

anARCHIVE_mock_archive.pdf

AnARCHIVE wiki (not an actual archive!)

http://anarchive.wikispaces.com/

Where's the Section on Censorship? A Personal Encounter with Provenance

Some of my writing published by Archifacts October 2011-April 2012 (Journal of the Archives & Records Association of New Zealand).

On the eve of his execution in 1915, Joe Hill—radical songwriter, union organiser and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—penned one final telegram from his Utah prison cell: “Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”1 After facing a five-man firing squad Hill’s body was cremated, his ashes placed into 600 tiny packets and sent to IWW Locals, sympathetic organizations and individuals around the world. Among the nations said to receive Hill’s ashes, New Zealand is listed.

Yet nothing was known about what happened to the ashes of Joe Hill in New Zealand. Were Hill’s ashes really sent to New Zealand? Or was New Zealand simply listed to give such a symbolic act more scope? If they did make it, what ever happened to them? These were the questions I set about trying to answer late in 2009 as a first-time researcher, initially out of curiosity and then predominantly out of obsession. In the process I published my first book,2 learnt a great deal about the treatment of New Zealand’s radical labour movement during the First World War and gained valuable research skills. I also gained an awareness of the power of archives and the importance of archival theory.

Before I began my research on Joe Hill’s ashes I had only visited an archive once—way back in 2002 as a graphic design student at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. Navigating Archway, reference interviews and the concept of provenance therefore, was an entirely new experience. It must have proved fruitful however for I now find myself immersed in a Masters of Information Studies at Victoria University, majoring in archives. The program has given me a theoretical lens into the past, facilitating some interesting reflection about my personal archival interaction. What follows is that reflection: my encounter with archives as a (inexperienced) user, the discovery and use of provenance search methods and grappling with archival gaps.

Archives, Archival Theory & Archway

New Zealand has a small but strong community of researchers focused on labour history. Yet much of this history “remains undocumented and unpublished. New Zealand work practices and cultures are relatively unexplored compared with other fields of social history.”3 Likewise, only recently have works appeared on transnational aspects of our working past—the transient nature of the early twentieth century workforce, interactions between national movements and the influence of ideas across borders. My work on Joe Hill’s ashes is a material manifestation of such migration and is reflected in part by the archival records I encountered throughout my research.

Joe Hill’s ashes, if they did make it to New Zealand as claimed by a long line of historians, would have arrived by way of post. On 20 November 1916—one year after his execution—Hill’s ashes were given to delegates present at the Tenth Convention of the IWW in Chicago. The remaining packets were then posted around the world on 3 January 1917. According to the minutes of the Chicago Convention, held at Wayne State University, no New Zealander was present. These records, and the fact that the New Zealand IWW had been receiving a steady stream of radical material in the post since 1908, seemed to suggest a postal possibility.

With the help of my friend Mark Crookston—who, at that time, was the Senior Advisor at the Government Digital Archive Programme (Archives New Zealand)—I began to canvas what kind of potential ‘hot spots’ could be present at the National Archives. Discussions with Mark also helped me come to grips with concepts like ‘original order’ and ‘provenance’ and prompted thinking about the postal systems of the past. However my initial experience with the physical archive was accidental. Due to its upgrade the Alexander Turnbull Library had just moved into Archives New Zealand’s Wellington premises—the ever-informative Bert Roth Collection having encouraged me to leave Christchurch and visit the capital. After finishing with the collection early I decided to make use of the Archives New Zealand reference room, and it was here that I experienced the uniqueness of archival principles and the concept of provenance firsthand.

My reference interview at Archives took place early on in my research, so my understanding of the postal system during the war years was still pretty limited. It was also my first archival reference ‘in the flesh’. As part of the Google Generation, my natural approach to Archway and the archivist was that of subject keywords, with a vague notion of their wider context. I quickly realised that simply punching ‘Joe Hill’ into Archway or asking for the ‘postal censorship section’ at the reference desk was not going to cut it. As we discussed my needs the archivist related them to the archive’s series system through looking into the records of the Customs Department. My subject-based enquiry became one of provenance, although I did not understand it fully at the time.

As a new user of archives I found this experience both confusing and fascinating. I had a loose idea of original order and provenance thanks to those late night, kitchen-based discussions with Mark, but I did not realise that description of records would be based on such principles rather than subject. Likewise, employing provenance was a new concept. Thankfully my introduction to archival theory in practice was made a lot easier due to the excellent service I received during that first visit. To cut a long interview short, the result of that experience left me with the seeds of a powerful search method that soon became crucial to my research.

The Power of Provenance

Provenance gave me a powerful framework to use when searching for possible documentation of Joe Hill’s ashes in New Zealand. I began to tease out ideas around records creation: who would have maintained the record/s I needed to uncover in order to show what happened to his ashes, and where would these records fit within the function and structure of its parent organization? If not explicitly described in a finding aid, where could they be located instead? This led me to gather contextual information about how censorship was instigated and operated during the First World War.

Censorship during the Great War has, unfortunately, been written about very little.4 The lack of information is probably due to the complex system of control put in place by the Massey Government and the confidential nature of its implementation. This confidentiality made an understanding of provenance even more pressing, as structural/functional information was simply not available.

Through the few secondary sources available and many hours on Archway I identified four key players with regard to wartime censorship: the Customs Department, the Post and Telegraph Department, the Army Department, and Sir John Salmond—Solicitor General of New Zealand from 1910-1920. Each was the creator of separate series of records, though provenance (and to an extent the administrative histories provided on Archway) helped make visible the relationships between them.

Legislation was the first signpost. The Customs Act of 1913 prohibiting the entry of ‘indecent’ literature into the country soon lead me to an Order in Council of 1915. This Order of Council specifically amended the Customs Act and addressed the material of the IWW directly, “prohibit[ing] the importation into New Zealand of the newspapers called Direct Action and Solidarity, and all other printed matter published or printed or purporting to be published or printed by or on behalf of the society known as ‘The Industrial Workers of the World.’”5 This legislation connected the Customs Department to the Post and Telegraph Department, and gave me a number of record series to research. For example, I found memorandums within the Post Department explaining the 1915 Order in Council and its implementation, highlighting key agents within the department’s structure to watch out for.

I then tried to focus on the relationships between these two record creators. Both Customs and the Post and Telegraph Department had a number of censors working within their ranks, the latter including the Deputy Chief Censor, W A Tanner. But I discovered that it was the military that managed censorship during the War. A number of key records (memorandums, reports on the British censorship model and how to apply it) helped me establish a sense of how censorship functioned: Tanner and other censors located across the country answered directly to Colonel Charles Gibbon, who was both Chief Censor and Chief of the General Staff of the New Zealand Military Forces. Censors were mostly officers of the Post Office and worked in the same building “as a matter of convenience”, but censors acted “under the instructions of the Military censor. The Post Office is bound to obey the Military censor.”6 It was therefore the records of the Army Department and a chain-of-command leading to Sir John Salmond that became a focus of my archival trawling.

Salmond, author of the stringent War Regulations imposed during the First World War and keen censor of socialist material, directed wartime censorship through Colonel Gibbon and his own Crown Law Opinions. When Joseph Ward, the Postmaster General, asked Salmond whether American socialist newspaper the International Socialist Review fell under the 1915 Order in Council, Salmond replied:

there is not sufficient evidence that the International Socialist Review is in any way connected with the Industrial Workers of the World. Nonetheless this publication is of a highly objectionable character advocating anarchy, violence and sedition. All copies of it therefore should without hesitation be detained…7

Similar correspondence between Salmond and various departments is archived in both Archives New Zealand and the Crown Law Library—painting a picture of a comprehensive system of censorship and completing the puzzle that faced me when I first visited Archives New Zealand. While subject keywords played a small part in locating information at a records level, provenance search methods made sure I did not overlook the key player—Sir John Salmond.

Further traces of IWW censorship are evident in a number of other records. In a file titled ‘Miscellaneous Administration Matters—Prohibited Literature—“Janes Fighting Ships”, Newspapers and other Printed Matters’, a worker at the Post and Telegraph Department reported the withholding of 8 bundles and 14 copies of IWW newspapers; while Salmond, in an Opinion to the Commissioner of Police, arranged “with the Post Office to have all correspondence addressed to [Wellington anarchist] Philip Josephs whether within New Zealand or elsewhere stopped and examined. It may be that such examination will show that Josephs’ is an active agent of the IWW.”8 In the same Crown Law Opinion to Ward referenced earlier, Salmond instructed that the International Socialist Review “should merely be detained” but that “all IWW publications should be destroyed.”9

Remains to be Seen

The outcome of my research is essentially about the records I never found—the lack of any record documenting the detention or transmission of the packet containing Joe Hill’s ashes. This archival gap—or what remained unsaid—suggested a pretty clear fate. In tandem with found documentation on IWW censorship, the overbearing absence of any records on Hill’s ashes themselves suggests that they never made it beyond the national border. The monitoring of correspondence that existed in 1917 alone is enough to warrant such a conclusion. That Sir John Salmond, War Regulations, and Orders in Council specifically targeted the IWW on a number of occasions (as further examined in my book) surely sealed the deal. It would have been a small miracle for the ashes of Joe Hill to see the light of day in the Dominion.

Yet I would never had identified this gap if I had not embraced the concept of provenance and delved into the functions and structures of the relevant records creators. Subject keyword searching may have turned up important records but, on its own, did not fill in the blanks.

Provenance gave me a tool in which to navigate the previously hidden relationships between the departments and their agents in charge of wartime censorship. It allowed me, as the user, to get a better picture of where the interaction between Joe Hill (through his ashes) and the New Zealand State may have taken place, and how the preservation of that interaction through time and space is due to archival principles such as provenance.

It is clear, having now spent a solid amount of time on Archway using provenance search methods, that provenance is a powerful tool for the user. The initial confusion around its meaning and the coming to terms with Archway is worth the potentialities they both uncover. What I gained from an understanding of the functions and structures of relevant record creator/s confirmed that ‘The Power of Provenance’10 is more than just a snappy title.

Endnotes

1 Joyce L. Kornbluh (ed), Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 130.
2 Jared Davidson, Remains to be Seen: Tracing Joe Hill’s ashes in New Zealand, (Wellington: Rebel Press, 2011).
3 Labour History Project, Membership Brochure, (Wellington: LHP, 2010).
4 By far the best source on the subject is John Anderson, “Military Censorship in World War 1: Its Use and Abuse in New Zealand,” (Thesis, Victoria University College, 1952)
5 The New Zealand Gazette, September 20, 1915.
6 Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1917, F8-8.
7 J W Salmond to Comptroller of Customs, November 29, 1915, Crown Law Office, Wellington.
8 J W Salmond to Commissioner of Police, October 20, 1915, “Opinions – Police Department 1913-1926,” Crown Law Office, Wellington.
9 Ibid.
10 David A. Bearman and Richard H. Lytle, “The Power of the Principle of Provenance,” Archivaria 21 (1985-86): 14-27.

Batch #4: Addington Pale Ale (APA)

#4: Addington Pale Ale

Thought I'd better update you all on the beer front (super important stuff, I know). Here's some pics of #4—the Addington Pale Ale—and its 'metadata'...

Batch #4: Addington Pale Ale (APA)

Method: Kit + Enhancer + Hops
Ingredients: Muntons Traditional Bitter Kit (35-45 EBU, 27-33 EBC), Copper Tun English Bitter Enhancer, NZ Cascade Hops & Golding Hops (2.0oz + 0.5oz pellets each as a tea), NZ Cascade Hops (1oz pellets, dry hopped)
Original Gravity: 1040
Final Gravity: 1020
ABV: 3.5%
Bottles: Glass (500ml, 330ml).
Bottled: 04-05-2012

Same process as #3, but with different hops. Funny, even though I added more hops it seems less hoppy when drinking it? Maybe it's just the hop variety? Or mix of hops? Anyway, it's 5 weeks old now, has a nice colour and head and is tasting like a well balanced, slightly (but not too) bitter beer with a nice aroma and Cascade flavour. It's definitely less 'tangy' than #3—whether that's to do with temp control or not is anyone's guess (I kept it lower this time, at 18C-20C). The fermentables were the same, although I want to try Coopers Enhancer #2 next time round, as it's got more malt extract than dextrose (the Copper Tun is mainly dextrose, from what I've read online).

As you can see the lacing is great, and retains head all the way down—yay!

Batch #5 is a Muntons Wheat Beer kit my neighbour threw in the fermenter a month back, and then the next brew I want to try is the Coopers Brewmaster Pilsner with Enhancer #2, just to see what difference the malt extract ratio will make. Might also use a different yeast to reach the target gravity. After that, who knows? Maybe some extract brews!

Participatory Digital Collections? Web 2.0 and Cultural Heritage Institutions in New Zealand

Been a bit slack on posting these up. Here's an essay from a few months ago, as part of my MIS studies.

Introduction
With the ever-developing digital realm comes the raised expectations of the user—a click of the mouse can purchase a pizza, book a holiday offshore, or access previously unattainable informational materials. As part of this development repositories offering digital collections, and specifically designed digital cultural heritage libraries, are increasingly common on the World Wide Web. Digitalised records—once seen in terms of preservation only—have opened the virtual door to the archive, increasing awareness and use.

Along with expectations of accessible digital collections, pressures of becoming more user-centric has meant cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) need to explore ways to encourage higher levels of user interaction, engagement, and participation: “our patrons are used to being able to review books on Amazon.com, comment on the musings of a friend as posted on their blogs, or contribute what they know about slavery in the antebellum South to a Wikipedia entry… they expect to be able to do similar activities when they encounter our Web-based content” (Daines & Nimer, 2009).

One way to do this is through well-designed interface, but it is primarily through Web 2.0 functionalities that CHIs can move beyond merely disseminating information to creating participatory virtual spaces. Interactive web tools are “changing the ways that archivists interact with their patrons,” and how patrons “approach archival research and how they view their archival interactions” (Daines & Nimer). As a result, if CHIs are to be sustainable and have a lasting impact in the ever-changing digital realm, the facilitation of participation should inform any digital project.

However, it seems the benefits of user participation is not fully realised by CHIs, especially in New Zealand. Although there are numerous digital libraries with a rich field of accessible content (such as the Alexander Turnbull Library’s Timeframes, Discover, and Papers Past; the University of Waikato’s New Zealand Digital Library; or the Digital Library of the Auckland Museum), the combination of access and user participation via Web 2.0 is relatively rare. This could be the result of managerial, technological, or financial barriers, or simply due to the young age of the field. As Sharma points out,

Academic literature addressing the use of Web 2.0 applications and principles by CHIs has only lately started moving beyond conceptual explorations of its meaning, benefits, challenges and implications for the industry… little research has been found that focuses solely on exploring the use of Web 2.0 applications and principles in online digital collections” (2011, p.2).

Whatever the barrier, their overcoming will facilitate egalitarian possibilities in the digital realm.

This essay hopes to highlight the concepts posited above, through the analysis of New Zealand three digital collections—Passchendaele Casualty Forms, Find, and Ceismic: Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive. The first is managed by Archives New Zealand for a very specific user— genealogists—and is indicative of a use-centric digital collection, while the National Library of New Zealand’s Find is a finding aid for various digital collections that allows the user to tag digital objects. Ceismic is a very different digital collection, designed to capture and archive stories relating to the Christchurch Earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 that, due to its purpose, has a very interactive component and highlights the potential of user participation with digital libraries. These very different collections represent the wide range of Web 2.0 capabilities that, unfortunately, are yet to be harnessed by many New Zealand digital collections.

Digital libraries and the potential of participation
 According to The Digital Library Federation:

Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities (2006-2008).

As well as ensuring access and use over time, digital libraries can serve other purposes. In the context of North America but with international relevance, The Association of Research Libraries argues that digital libraries can:

expedite the systematic development of: the means to collect, store, and organize information and knowledge in digital form; and of digital library collections in North America; promote the economical and efficient delivery of information to all sectors of North American society; encourage cooperative efforts which leverage the considerable investment in North American research resources, computing and communications network; strengthen communication and collaboration between and among the research, business, government, and educational communities; take an international leadership role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge in areas of strategic importance to North America; and contribute to the lifelong learning opportunities of all North Americans (1995).

However, digital libraries have the capability to go much further than search and access, facilitating “the creation of collaborative and contextual knowledge environments” that can “match and indeed dramatically extend traditional libraries” (Lagoze, Krafft, Payette, & Jesuroga, 2005). The advantages of technology means digital libraries can transcend the constraints of the physical environment, allowing collections to be collaborative, participatory, and user-centric.

As well as sound interface design, the development of blogs, social media, wikis, and tagging—referred to as Web 2.0—can be employed by CHIs to encourage user participation and collaboration. Theses changes in digital technology enable software developers and end-users to use the World Wide Web in new and innovative ways to what it was originally intended (Wikipedia). As a result, “Web 2.0 technologies have transformed the Internet into a participatory experience” (Daines & Nimer), offering “archives the chance to develop new and innovative ways of conveying their message,” as well as allowing users “a greater exploratory and active role, thus enhancing the learning experiences available” (Lester, 2006, p.88).

Blogs—websites formatted to provide diary-like entries of an individual or institution—and social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, can be used by CHIs to publicize digital collections while allowing for networking and questions from users. Tagging and collaborative websites (wikis) that allow users to add or modify content on a repository’s finding aids or records, aids both the usability of the collection and increases user participation—drawing on the users knowledge of certain collections and their own search methods to provide a wealth of new information.

Research has shown that Web 2.0 does in fact “engage users online and encourage the development of an active community”—systems that allowed users to tag or create and edit content had significant positive effects on the participation of the user when compared with non-Web 2.0 enabled systems (Sharma, p.7). Unlike Papers Past, users of the National Library of Australia’s Australian Newspapers can “interact with its collections through tagging, text correcting, and commenting”—the tagging feature was found to be a real crowd-pleaser (Holley, 2009, as cited in Sharma, p.9), creating the growth of an active community of users engaging with the collection.

Despite the positive effects of Web 2.0 CHIs, particularly archives, have been slow to implement it: “findings suggest that the cultural heritage sector has been comparatively slow in making digital collections Web 2.0-enabled though a large number of institutions have started exploring Web 2.0 for other purposes” (Sharma, p.69). Barriers to implementation are many, and includes the need to know the “audience and objectives before launching any Web 2.0 initiatives” (Daines & Nimer), the blurring of lines between the professional custodian and the user, issues of authenticity and intellectual property, potential obsolescence of Web applications (through technical or social factors), balancing participation with privacy, and crucially, winning over CHIs staff and management (Sharma, p.8).

A quick scan of the New Zealand environment confirms this claim. Many New Zealand digital libraries lack Web 2.0 applications—the only collections I found with wiki/comment capabilities were NZ On Screen (http://www.nzonscreen.com/) and the Audio Visual Archives (http://audiovisual.archives.govt.nz/exhibitions/). Even collections with a strong user-focus and an understanding of how and why the collection will be used did not contain Web 2.0 functions. An example of this is Passchendaele Casualty Forms, a digital collection managed by Archives New Zealand.



Passchendaele Casualty Forms
http://www.archives.govt.nz/exhibitions/passchendaele/main
Archives New Zealand

In 2005 the personnel files of those who served in the New Zealand Defence Services, namely in the South African War and the First World War, were transferred to Archives New Zealand (Lafferty-Hancock, 2006). Passchendaele Casualty Forms ensures these significant digitalised war records are available as an easy to use digital collection.

The collection’s home page greets the viewer with a simple interface and an explanation on the records original source and the selected files on show. The records are accessed through an alphabetically organized list of soldiers (of which there are close to 700). These are then displayed to the left of a generic description on how to use the hyperlinked finding aid (Archway) in order find out more on that particular soldier, or wider contextual information.

The usability of the collection is excellent. A clean and concise layout, coupled with an alphabetic menu and linear process enables the user to understand the collection, control the search system, and easily find the records on show. The viewer is given information about the records and what they contain (such as name, date of birth, rank, and the movements of the individual). This simple, informative interface allows for easy navigation, and ultimately, user satisfaction.

The collection’s interface suggests a user-centric premise, highlighting Archives New Zealand’s digital collection of personnel files and their availability to genealogists. In this sense, the collection management is rather successful in meeting its intended users—research into how genealogists search for information revealed that, “genealogists… wanted lists of names, or names indexes, or search engines that retrieved by name to facilitate their research” (Duff & Johnson, 2003, p.85). The alphabetical structure of the records and the encouraged use of names in Archway ensure these needs are met.

However the collection’s usability and simple interface comes at the expense of user participation—there is no space for comments or other participatory functions. The key features of online participation identified by Sharma—‘join, converse, collect, critique, create, and compare’ (p.50-62)—are not applicable to the collection, which is a shame considering the passionate and ever-growing community of genealogists. And while hyperlinks allows for further context, the user cannot tag records to enhance the search and retrieval process, or add their own context for others.


Find
http://find.natlib.govt.nz/
National Library of New Zealand

Designed by the National Library of New Zealand, Find is “a discovery tool that spans multiple catalogues and digital collections” (National Library of New Zealand, 2011), allowing the user to extensively search and access almost all of the National Library’s digitalized collections. These include Papers Past, Timeframes, Publications NZ, and Discover.

The home page is simple, easy to comprehend, and prominently displays a customizable search box as the main feature—allowing various entry-points into the collections. A sidebar menu contains links, login details, and a ‘User tags’ hyperlink, conveying that users can have some kind of personalized interaction with the collection from the beginning. An informative ‘Help Menu’ has been developed after detailed discussions with 27 Find users, offering a swag of valuable content.

Once the user is logged in they can view their search history in a ‘Favorites’ folder. Accessed items can also be saved to this customizable folder, allowing objects to be viewed, emailed or printed at a later date. Users can also ‘tag’ objects—adding unique keywords to items that can personalize search language and make “collections more accessible to the average user,” creating “a dialogue between the piece of art being described and the user” (Daines & Nimer). For example, on the description page of a 1970 photograph of Karori Mall, Wellington, users have created tags for the types of cars in the picture, adding a level of depth not given in the original metadata.

Find can tick the ‘join, collect, create’, and ‘compare’ boxes on Sharma’s list, although ‘converse’ and ‘critique’ are left to the private realm of emailed feedback. Having a publicly accessible wiki or blog would greatly improve the conversational aspect of Web 2.0 participation, as would more prominent menus on tagging and Web 2.0 in general. Nonetheless, Find is one of the few New Zealand digital collections that allows user tagging, and is more participatory than Passcehdaele Casualty Forms and many other digital collections.


Ceismic: Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive
http://ceismic.org.nz/
University of Canterbury

Ceismic: Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive has been initiated by the University of Canterbury to act as a “comprehensive digital archive of video, audio, documents and images related to the Canterbury Earthquakes of 2010 and 2011” (University of Canterbury, 2011). As an online collecting archive its content (and success) relies heavily on input from the user, and even though the project is at an early stage, already enables an impressive level of participation not present in other collections.

The aesthetically pleasing and functional homepage signals the library’s intention: easily accessible content by and for the user. The homepage itself is customisable—background images form a slideshow that can be changed by the user—and features links, information, and social media updates such as Tweets. Its three main collections—Quakestories, When My Home Shook, and Kete Christchurch—are all signified and easily accessible.

Quakestories, an online forum for the collection of personalised stories relating to the two earthquakes, allows the user to directly create for, and converse with, the collection. Previously collected stories are displayed which creates a conversation and a sense of community that typifies the best of Web 2.0 functionality. Similar to Quakestories is When My Home Shook, but this collection focuses specifically on the participation of children. Finally, Kete Christchurch is an online basket for collecting a range of materials relating to the earthquakes, from oral histories to photographs.

How the collected digital objects will be accessed and used, and whether Web 2.0 capabilities will be available in the final form of Ceismic is yet to be seen. However its current use of Web 2.0 is at a level of user interaction, engagement, and particpation not encountered in the examples cited above, firmly placing the user at the centre of the collection and beginning a conversation that should be fruitful for generations to come.


Conclusion
Digital libraries can be more than search and access portals to information. Through well designed interfaces and Web 2.0 capabilities, digital libraries and their collections can extend the role of the physical library—building communities, encouraging participation, and engaging users in informative and exciting ways. Collections that enable the user to join, converse, collect, critique, create, and compare have been shown to create positive effects for both the user and the CHI.

Despite this, many digital collections in New Zealand do not have Web 2.0 capabilities. The digital collections highlighted above are representative of the wider environment—little or no use of Web 2.0, or when it is used, falls short of a full Web 2.0 experience. The adolescence of Web 2.0, or issues of around the user, professionalism, authenticity, obsolescence, privacy, and acceptance could be some reasons for its slow uptake in New Zealand.

Yet these barriers are not insurmountable, and CHIs need to engage with Web 2.0 and its challenges: “Archivists need to actively experiment with Web 2.0 technologies in order to discover which of these tools will best meet our needs and the needs of our patrons. In order to make rational decisions about which technologies to experiment with, we need to understand what Web 2.0 is and how it can potentially be used to augment our services” (Daines & Nimer). User-surveys and a focus on a collection’s primary audience would go a long way in determining if and how Web 2.0 could be implemented; clear guidelines and boundaries around the user/custodian roles would highlight professional and authenticity issues; good policies and project management would counter obsolescence and privacy issues (or at least put plans in place to deal with them); and finally, research, advocacy, and awareness-building could help tip the balance in the staffroom towards Web 2.0 implementation. Whether they want to or not, CHIs need to deal with these barriers to keep up with user expectations. Or less politely, “harness the new collaboration or perish” (Daines & Nimer).




References:

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