Historical Research Using Email Archives

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Similarly, there has been a call for archivists to 'consider very different types of access' in line with researcher needs (Langdon 2016). Visual analytics are designed to promote exploratory search and browsing behaviour from the user (Hangal et al 2015;Borden and Baron 2016) supporting the extraction of knowledge on a variety of levels both holistic and specific and bypassing the limitations of search centred methods of exploration (Winters and Prescott 2019). Such exploratory approaches 'capitalise on the characteristics of digital sources' (Nix and Decker 2021) and embrace the flexibility of the digital format.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A survey on email visualisation research to address the conflict between privacy and access

2022

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Emails, much like communicative genres such as letters that predate them, are a rich source of data for researchers, but they are replete with privacy considerations. This paper explores the resulting friction between privacy concerns and email data access. Studies of email can often be centred on understanding patterns of behaviour and/or relationships between people or groups, and, as such, embody risks of disclosing private information. This is further amplified in humanities research which is concerned with the individual, their work and the circumstances that influence them. Furthermore, previous studies have expounded upon the benefits of visualisations for researching email data, a method which has been reported both as a path to addressing known concerns, as well as, introducing new concerns in privacy. The spectrum of methodologies leave archivists and curators of email data in a quandary, unable to balance accessibility with privacy. The research presented in this paper contributes a systematic approach to examining the relationship between email visualisation research and privacy. It presents a categorisation of email visualisation attributes, and a graded scale of privacy, to be used in conjunction as a framework for interrogating existing research and their associated email collections. The paper aims to instigate the first steps in concretely situating the extent to which research can take advantage of or is challenged by privacy conscious data management.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A survey on email visualisation research to address the conflict between privacy and access

2022

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“…What would such a personal digital archive be like, and how might it affect the way we live?" Such questions lead to innovative designs that foster interaction between users and archival data: nostalgia-inducing, algorithmically generated playlists of music based on archives of listening habits held by last.fm (Odom et al, 2019); the development of "finding aids" tailored to personal email archives (Hangal et al, 2015); and the explicit instantiation of certain value codes within population-specific archives (Fiesler et al, 2016). The extent of such The archive of ubiquitous computing archival structures is limited only by the breadth of the ecology of devices that collect such traces.…”

Section: Archives: a View From Withinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Into the archive of ubiquitous computing: the data perfect tense and the historicization of the present

Seberger

2021

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PurposeThis paper theorizes ubiquitous computing as a novel configuration of the archive. Such a configuration is characterized by shifts in agency underlying archival mechanics and a pronounced rhythmic diminution of such mechanics in which the user's experiential present tense is rendered fundamentally historical. In doing so, this paper troubles the relationship between: archival mechanics such as appraisal, accession and access; the archive as a site of historical knowledge production and the pervasiveness of data-driven daily life.Design/methodology/approachBy employing conceptual analysis, I analyze a classic vision of ubiquitous computing to describe the historicization of the present tense in an increasingly computerized world. The conceptual analysis employed here draws on an interdisciplinary set of literature from library and information science, philosophy and computing fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing.FindingsI present the concept of the data perfect tense, which is derived from the future perfect tense: the “will have had” construction. It refers to a historicized, data-driven and fundamentally archival present tense characterizing the user's lived world in which the goal of action is to have had created data for future unspecified use. The data perfect reifies ubiquitous computing as an archive, or a site of historical knowledge production predicated on sets of potential statements derived from data generated, appraised, acquisitioned and made accessible through and by means of pervasive “smart” objects.Originality/valueThis paper provides foundational consideration of ubiquitous computing as a configuration of the archive through the analysis of its temporalities: a rhythmic diminution that renders users' experiential present tenses as fundamentally historical, constructed through the agency of smart devices. In doing so, it: contributes to ongoing work within HCI seeking to understand the relationship between HCI and history; introduces concepts relevant to the analysis of novel technological ecologies in terms of archival theory; and constitutes preliminary interdisciplinary steps towards highlighting the relevance of theories of the archive and archival mechanics for critiquing sociotechnical concerns such as surveillance capitalism.

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