The New Social – Reflections – 2

In our second reflection we discuss the hybrid publications project which aims to make an online archive accessible to the public in an innovative and interactive way. To achieve this, We’ve enlisted a designer and a developer who are skilled in digital archiving and publishing. The project is ambitious, and Framer Framed has set ethical, financial, and technical boundaries for the development process.

Framer Framed: Hybrid Publications Tool

Process and Methodology: As we mentioned in our first reflection, it took us a while to get The New Social Hybrid Publication project to get going due to the complexity and ambition of the project as well as the fact that we are also working with a consortium of partners, of whom not all are based in the Netherlands. Once we established the different roles of the participating partners, we were able to concentrate on our part of the project.

What we first did is get in touch with a designer and a developer who is highly skilled and experienced with digital archiving of different types of information. On top of this, he is also well versed in the art of regular publishing, namely physical books. We had a couple of brainstorm sessions where he was able to map out and discover the Framer Framed archive and think of ways to make them available in a hybrid form. As mentioned before The New Social is a research project to make the (online) archive accessible to the public in an innovative and interactive way. During this brainstorm phase, we concluded that there are tools available which enable hybrid publishing but are commercial. What we are attempting is open source. The challenge for Framer Framed is that not everything should/cannot be indexed/categorized.

We then went on to make a schedule of the deliverables as well as the various stages of developing this toolkit. We’ve also contacted the relevant parties who can help bring this to fruition. We have also managed to put in place a framework of what we want and how to go about it. We’ve also set ethical, financial, and technical boundaries in regard to the output which we will be revisiting throughout the entire development process.

We have also ensured to have a contingency plan for a toolkit with the minimum requirements acceptable for Framer Framed as well as our partners.

Public Program: whilst establishing the development process, we have also been hosting and planning a series of events where the questions that arise during the brainstorm and development process will be addressed, in addition to the public programs we’ve mentioned in the previous update.