We have tried to remain conscious of what communities are being left out of the collections we are developing, such as the non-English speaking communities with whom we need to improve our outreach and individuals and organizations that might not have a digital presence currently. As we have the ability to offer basic training at the library and through our community partners,we have recently been exploring the idea of creating a website or Instagram account designed to give individuals and organizations the opportunity to try out these technologies without the weight of a long-term commitment, but with the assurance that their content would be preserved among our web archives.
It still feels that we are in the earliest phases of whatsapp lead this endeavour, but we have tried to build a collaborative system of curation which could be sustained going forward. By spreading the role of curation across the community, on the project and ensure that the perspectives represented in the archive are broader, more varied, and thus more reflective of our small city as it is.
I think it’s very important to remember that when it comes to adoption of new technologies our design decisions influence and literally “embed” new behaviours into people who adopt this technology. So the key question to me is: “Do we design to change or not to change behaviours that people earned using the centralized web?”
I’m very curious, as DWeb Camp fast approaches July 18-21, 2019, how many of these challenges will appear again as the questions that keep the cogs in our brains working late into the night. I hope this recap of discussions from 2018 will jumpstart our process, and accelerate the learning we need industry-wide.