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#4 George Oates

For the fourth instalment of New Archive Interpretations Het Nieuwe Instituut asked designer, entrepreneur and expert on digital archives George Oates to reflect and think about ways of highlighting relations between documents, files, and people in digital archives.

MVRDV archival materials. Photo George Oates.

George Oates has worked on and around the web since 1996, mainly focusing on the front-end of the web(sites). She is "an intelligent strategist, a fabricator of process, and a sensitive interaction designer. She is interested in all sorts of things, not limited to ubiquitous computing, curatorial practice and organic information systems". Of particular interest to this particular commission, is her previous work from creating web software with a human voice, and inventing The Commons on Flickr, a program to help public institutions like The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian - and Het Nieuwe Instituut - share photographs from their collections with the Flickr community. Oates maintains a blog.

"MVRDV's digital archive is used by the institute's conservators as a case study to explore aspects of digital archiving and preservation. Rather than focusing on traditional methods of selection and deletion, the aim will be to capture the various relations between different files, documents and people that could aid future preservation efforts."

Article with literature links

Photo George Oates

Read the complete article by fellow Annet Dekker on Oates' project for New Archive Interpretations.

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Interview with George Oates

Photo George Oates

On ways of highlighting relations between documents, files, and people in digital archives.

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Blogpost George Oates I

On a field trip and first thoughts.

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Blogpost George Oates II

On the second phase of the project.

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