Start 2 Collaborate: Letterenhuis and University of Antwerp Joining Forces in Tackling Challenges Related to Born-Digital Archives
Lamyk Bekius isabelle van ongeval
The nature of paper archives has never required close collaboration between archives and researchers – researchers could easily access records within archival boundaries and in a purely transactional frame. Born-digital archives, however, provide strong arguments for both parties to engage actively and even require creators to be more involved. The case for partnerships between archivists, researchers and literary authors in dealing with born-digital archives has been made many times, but only continues to grow in importance as more born-digital archives are making their way into literary archival institutions (Pulkkinen 2023; Jaillant 2022; Ries & Palkó 2019; Gooding, Smith & Mann, 2019). 
The scale and complexity of born-digital archives enforces strong partnerships between creators, archives and research in order to guarantee a real future for born-digital (literary) heritage. Genuine collaboration between scholars and archivists creates many pathways for developing and enhancing archival workflows for acquiring, describing and unlocking born-digital archives for research. Researchers get better acquainted with limitations and possibilities of born-digital archives, enabling them to articulate solid research questions. Collaboration with creators is no less important, as they play a crucial role in the preservation of their digital documents (Micunovic, Marčetić, and Krtalić 2016).
In this Lightning Talk we share our experience of the collaboration between the Letterenhuis (Isabelle Van Ongeval) and the University of Antwerp (Lamyk Bekius) in the scope of born-digital archives. Our regular meetings to discuss approaches and research interests regarding born-digital archives have already led to concrete results. These include: joining forces in persuading Flemish authors to donate their old computers to the Letterenhuis and make them available for research projects; working together on a project with the Flemish poet Maud Vanhauwaert to log the writing process of a poem for the Letterenhuis’ new collection exhibition; an exploration of the filecontents on the floppy disks of the Flemish poet and essayist Herman de Coninck to make them more findable and more accessible for research; and partnering up for the (proposed) CLARIAH-VL+ International Research Infrastructure, in which we plan to develop a model for the description of born-digital and hybrid (literary) archives.
managing access start 2 preserve