Lost in the Flood: Finding and using Community Generated Digital Content

Community Generated Digital Content (CGDC) represents a unique category of data that has historically been underappreciated and underrepresented within archival settings. Over the past three years, Our Heritage, Our Stories (OHOS) has been seeking to rectify this shortcoming, combining humanities and computer science expertise to connect CGDC collections, enrich these materials, and showcase them to wider audiences. Focusing on overcoming and dismantling existing barriers to the broader adoption of CGDC within archives and institutions, this keynote discusses the new approaches and resources – computational, social, and systemic – that have been developed during the OHOS project. In doing so, it also raises fundamental challenges that have been met during the project’s research and which remain extant threats to the accessibility and sustainability of the UK’s wealth of CGDC. Looking ahead, key reflections and recommendations from the project set out how CGDC may be increasingly integrated into the UK collections infrastructure, and how the progressive inclusion of such materials remains vital to developing a comprehensive and representative UK national collection.