Author
Ingrid Mason (Collections Australia Network)
Abstract
Collections Australia Network (CAN) is a technological platform for content aggregation, enabling access to well-structured and organised collection information for the convenience of the research community to retrieve.
Content aggregator services, like CAN, have a role to play beyond providing a technological platform in service of eResearch. Content aggregation services need to evolve from their current state as technological platforms to active agents of social change in support of eResearch goals. Content aggregating services operate as a hub, a key player and broker technically – and socially – in the wider network of contributors. Content aggregating services already operate as boundary negotiators but it is as incubators and facilitators of change in practice and the discernment of areas for strategic digital development that these services are in a unique position to contribute to advancing eResearch initiatives.
About the speaker
Ingrid Mason is the National Project Manager for Collections Australia Network. Prior to this Ingrid worked as the Special Projects Manager, Digital Innovation Unit, University of Sydney. In previous roles she has: managed a university digital repository, lead a web archiving team, and contributed to developing the requirements for the National Digital Heritage Archive in New Zealand.
Ingrid has published: “How has digital culture influenced our ideas about permanence? Changing practice in a national legal deposit library”, Library Trends, 2007, 56.1: 198-215 and "Cultural information standards: political territory and rich rewards" in Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: a Critical Discourse (2006).