Session A8
Tracks
Track A (Bristol 2&3 Suite): New Horizons - Artificial intelligence and digital innovations
| Friday, August 29, 2025 |
| 11:05 AM - 12:25 PM |
| Bristol 2&3 Suite |
Overview
Individual Papers
Chair: Geoff Pick, Chair, Archive Service Accreditation Committee
Record Surveys: a classic concept for the future
Mrs Fiona Bourne, Archive Manager, Royal College Of Nursing Archive
Challenging Legacy: Embracing Digital Scholarship for Global Futures
Ms Valentina Flex, Gertrude Bell Project Archivist, Newcastle University
Chair: Geoff Pick, Chair, Archive Service Accreditation Committee
Record Surveys: a classic concept for the future
Mrs Fiona Bourne, Archive Manager, Royal College Of Nursing Archive
Challenging Legacy: Embracing Digital Scholarship for Global Futures
Ms Valentina Flex, Gertrude Bell Project Archivist, Newcastle University
Speaker
Mr Geoffrey Pick
Chair
Archive Service Accreditation Committee
Chair: Session A8
Biography
Geoff, as the ARA’s representative, has chaired the Archive Service Accreditation Committee since 2019, taking the programme through the difficult days of the pandemic and looking ahead through the process of refreshing and renewing the standard to meet current sector needs. He was Director of The London Archives 2013-21 and Chair of ARA 2016-18.
Mrs Fiona Bourne
Archive Manager
Royal College Of Nursing Archive
Record Surveys: a classic concept for the future
11:05 AM - 11:25 AMAbstract
If you qualified in the UK in the last few decades, your training would have included basic principles that you may now consider relegated to physical records. However, the simple records survey should not be dismissed as unnecessary in a sector pivoting into digital domination.
Management of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) archive service requires contemporary collecting for the RCN Group which is almost exclusively digital.
In the last 7 years of operating the RCN digital archive, staff were faced with unexpected collecting projects which changed the current digital landscape for the whole organisation. The first major digital collecting project with the RCN governance team. The urgent decommissioning of a network server. The sudden introduction of Microsoft Teams and subsequent move away from network record storage which closed down a shared network space containing over 2 million records. The cyber-security related desire to remove the remaining network servers. And more recently, the ambition to embed SharePoint-Preservica automated records management using Preserve 365.
Every one of these projects were urgent and would have been disastrous without solid surveying of the scope of each challenge, location and type of records. Some were more successful than others. It made the archive team consider formats and migration much more closely, start to run projections on digital storage and ultimately to fix their eyes on a more streamlined system of automated archiving.
Management of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) archive service requires contemporary collecting for the RCN Group which is almost exclusively digital.
In the last 7 years of operating the RCN digital archive, staff were faced with unexpected collecting projects which changed the current digital landscape for the whole organisation. The first major digital collecting project with the RCN governance team. The urgent decommissioning of a network server. The sudden introduction of Microsoft Teams and subsequent move away from network record storage which closed down a shared network space containing over 2 million records. The cyber-security related desire to remove the remaining network servers. And more recently, the ambition to embed SharePoint-Preservica automated records management using Preserve 365.
Every one of these projects were urgent and would have been disastrous without solid surveying of the scope of each challenge, location and type of records. Some were more successful than others. It made the archive team consider formats and migration much more closely, start to run projections on digital storage and ultimately to fix their eyes on a more streamlined system of automated archiving.
Biography
Fiona Bourne is the Archive Manager for the Royal College of Nursing Archive, overseeing both physical and digital archives.
Passing briefly through jobs in archaeology (University of Glasgow 1992) and museum curatorship (University of Leicester 1994), Fiona discovered the archive world in 1995 through volunteering opportunities. After heritage-focussed archive roles, Fiona started at the RCN, a UK trade union and professional association for nurses, in 1998 and in 2011 completed the archive and records management qualification at University of Dundee.
Management of the archive service requires contemporary collecting for the RCN Group business archive, nurses' personal papers collections and recording oral history interviews.
Since 2017, the RCN archive has used Preservica software for both digital preservation and online record access for RCN members, staff and the public. In 2021 the archive switched catalogue management system to Epexio for improved digital record connectivity.
During Fiona’s time at the RCN, the archive service has turned inevitably towards records management as the boundary with digital archiving becomes increasingly blurred. The RCN archive continues to take advantage of new technologies and is currently working to embed SharePoint-Preservica records management using Preserve 365.
As an archive professional, Fiona tries to give something back. Aside from conference participation in both archive and records management sectors, she is a UK Peer Reviewer and Assessor (Scotland) for Archives Accreditation. Since 2022, Fiona has been a member of the Scottish Council on Archives Board of Trustees, currently as Treasurer. And Fiona volunteers with the Edinburgh Collection Response Network.
Ms Valentina Flex
Gertrude Bell Project Archivist
Newcastle University
Challenging Legacy: Embracing Digital Scholarship for Global Futures
11:25 AM - 11:45 AMAbstract
The session will cover recent transformative work at Newcastle University Special Collections focusing on the UNESCO Memory of the World Gertrude Bell Archive as a testbed for utilising digital scholarship to encourage engagement with and interpretation of cultural heritage. Exploring the drivers, methodologies, and impacts of three recent projects – Gertrude Bell and the Kingdom of Iraq at 100, Evolving Hands and Beyond the Margins – the session will consider the ways in which improved metadata, enhanced digital resources and the use of emerging technologies and standards have increased the equitable accessibility of the archive by researchers nationally and internationally, particularly where the content of that archive is disputed and colonial, with a legacy of curation that has at times reinforced rather than challenged these aspects. Highlighting the use of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) and Text Encoded Initiative (TEI), as well as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), the session will explore the advantages and challenges of developing non-traditional skills and competencies. It will explore the ways cultural heritage professionals can benefit from cross-sector collaboration, including the role of academics and research software engineering professionals in the creation of a bespoke visualisations and entry points. The session will consider the ways in which emerging technologies and positive change can be utilised to increase accessibility, understanding of and engagement with cultural heritage in an evolving, dynamic way.
Biography
Valentina has been in post at Newcastle University Special Collections for over three years as Project Archivist cataloguing the UNESCO Memory of the World-inscribed Gertrude Bell archive. She has worked on two projects funded by the Harry and Alice Stillman Family Foundation, Gertrude Bell and the Kingdom of Iraq at 100 (2021-2023) and Beyond the Margins: Mapping Gertrude Bell (2023-2024). Over the past two years, Valentina has been involved in the relaunch of the dedicated Gertrude Bell website whilst also curating the recent Great North Museum: Hancock exhibition, Challenging Legacies: the Kingdom of Iraq and Gertrude Bell.
Her latest project, Beyond the Margins, focused on the creation of a geo-spatial-temporal interface which allows users to explore archival items within geographical and historical context.
Admin
Jon Richards
Virtual Platform Technician
Opening Doors & Venues
Jedd Sprosen
Virtual Platform Technician
Opening Doors & Venues
Chair
Geoffrey Pick
Chair
Archive Service Accreditation Committee
