A Study on the Methods to Improve the Research Support Service in Presidential Archives

Abstract

The study aims to identify the problems of the research support service in presidential archives for users who use archives for scholarly purposes. For these purposes, the study conducted a literature survey. Moreover, this study compared and analyzed the content of presidential archives' Web sites between the U.S. and Korea. In addition, we examined the interviews via e-mail with an archivist working in the presidential archives in the U.S. and gained the materials from the presidential archives in Korea through a request of information disclosure. It was found that six improvements were considered by academic users to meet their needs. Consequently, based on the analysis, a research support services framework consisting of a service category was developed. With the proposed services, the academic utilization of presidential archives can be facilitated.

A knowledge graph of interlinking digital records: the case of the 1997 Korean financial crisis

“…The Centre for the Freedom of Information and Transparent Society (CFITS) has been collecting materials related to the crisis and providing digital archives. The 97imf.kr archive aims to explain the 1997 Korean financial crisis to the public and share relevant information (Kim, 2020). The archive provides comprehensive documentation of the citizens' efforts, the government's response to the onset and resolution of the crisis and the social and structural changes in South Korea.…”

“…The archive includes a mix of public, private, domestic and international sources acquired through various methods including in-house collections, donations and requests for information disclosure. For example, the CFITS has been requesting declassified records from the IMF since 2017 and has received transfers from public institutions, private companies, labour organisations and research institutions, including the National Archives of Korea, as well as donations of privately held materials from relevant researchers (Kim, 2020;Lee and Kim, 2020). The archive made approximately 5,300 records publicly available for the first time in 2019, with an additional 609 records provided by the IMF in 2020.…”

“…This study proposes a method for making records interoperable by applying metadata standards. The Archives of 1997 Korean financial crisis (hereafter referred to as 97imf.kr, in conformance with the website domain) is a digital archive that accumulates and discloses various records about the 1997 foreign exchange crisis with some data sets accessible online (Kim, 2020). The 1997 South Korean foreign exchange crisis was a catalyst for significant societal changes, such as massive financial and corporate reorganisation, mass unemployment and labour flexibility (Baek et al, 2004).…”