The first of several quick posts from this year’s excellent DCDC conference in Salford. Digital impact expert Simon Tanner asked an interesting question in his Keynote talk. If we compare archives services to wine, the wine equals the collections, the glass the infrastructure of building and staff, and the drinking is access to the collections by users. Which element is most important?
Simon asked us to tweet one of the hashtags #dcdc15wine #dcdc15glass #dcdc15drink to cast our vote.
My choice:
#dcdc15wine all comes from having content in first place! Real authentic tactile values
— Alison Cullingford (@speccollbrad) October 14, 2015
Infrastructure is vital!
I vote #DCDC15glass without infrastructure we can’t share our content, and good infrastructure adds meaning and collates diverse content
— Isobel Hunter (@HunterIsobel) October 14, 2015
It’s all about the access:
#dcdc15drink #DCDC15 absolutely pointless if material ‘exists’ but with no access – effectively in a digital black hole.
— christian algar (@CBarnacles) October 14, 2015
Some fence-sitting!
#dcdc15wine #dcdc15glass #dcdc15drink – because none works without the others #sittingonfence #dcdc15
— Lis Parcell (@lisparcell) October 14, 2015
So which element won the vote?
See The Wine, the Glass and the Drinking, a blog post by Simon Tanner, for the answer. He also discusses this unanswerable question in more depth and includes links to a Storify of the tweets and to the whole keynote on Slideshare.
And on reflection
This game showed how effective use of social media can encourage an audience to learn and reflect. It was fun, the question was thought-provoking, and the number of options worked well. DCDC is particularly suited to this activity because so many delegates are active tweeters – check out #DCDC15 for the proof!
Possibly overthinking this, but one could include also the landscape or context in which the wine was made and which it allows us to experience. Drinking is more complex too – one can get the quick hit of visual appeal (the alcohol perhaps?) or research the historical context over many years, which could perhaps be exploring the terroir of our wine. Actually, I am definitely overthinking this …
Credit: wine glass from Bony Nguyen’s flickr stream, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The Special Collections Handbook 