Recordkeeping Metadata, the Archival Multiverse, and Societal Grand Challenges

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of key efforts in recent years by the archival and recordkeeping community, including by these authors, to identify, apply, exploit and manage recordkeeping metadata to address diverse social, cultural and technological concerns and imperatives in the archival multiverse.  It reports on a new research project that will build an exemplar metadata-driven Sustainable Living Archive for Indigenous communities in Australia, and concludes by outlining an ongoing initiative established in 2011 by the Archival Education and Research Institutes (AERI) to identify ways in which archival and recordkeeping systems and metadata can contribute to nationally and internationally-identified "societal grand challenges" such as climate change, peace and security, corporate governance, development and democratisation, digital divide, human rights, the Information Society and technological change, social justice and inclusion, sustainable communities.