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The role of algorithms in decision-making is now so consequential that we agree that algorithmic systems must be designed, implemented, and managed in ways that are understandable to interested parties. Anchored in a tradition of capturing, contextualizing, and preserving evidence of analog and digital technologies, this article draws out the roles adopted or tried on by the recordkeeping professions to account for algorithmic systems as they communicate and represent meaning in the world. We begin by delineating a promising role for recordkeeping professions as algorithmic conceptualizers. We show how expertise in evaluating recorded information provides a method to conceive or model algorithms from an accountability and transparency perspective. Then we delineate a breakthrough role for recordkeeping professionals as algorithmic historicizers, revealing how the professions' curation of records of human actions extends to the capture and preservation of algorithms for purposes of critical review. Finally, we delineate an emerging role for recordkeeping professionals as algorithmic sponsors involved in harnessing algorithmic tools to manage and make accessible other forms of digital evidence at scale. In articulating such roles, our goal is to examine the opportunities inherent in harnessing the relationships that form at the intersection of algorithmic activity and evidentiary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information quality (IQ) is key to users' satisfaction with information systems. Understanding what IQ means to users can effectively inform system improvement. Existing inquiries into self‐tracking data quality primarily focus on accuracy. Interviewing 20 consumers who had self‐tracked health indicators for at least 6 months, we identified eight dimensions that consumers apply to evaluate self‐tracking data quality: value‐added, accuracy, completeness, accessibility, ease of understanding, trustworthiness, aesthetics, and invasiveness. These dimensions fell into four categories—intrinsic, contextual, representational, and accessibility—suggesting that consumers judge self‐tracking data quality not only based on the data's inherent quality but also considering tasks at hand, the clarity of data representation, and data accessibility. We also found that consumers' self‐tracking data quality judgments are shaped primarily by their goals or motivations, subjective experience with tracked activities, mental models of how systems work, self‐tracking tools' reputation, cost, and design, and domain knowledge and intuition, but less by more objective criteria such as scientific research results, validated devices, or consultation with experts. Future studies should develop and validate a scale for measuring consumers' perceptions of self‐tracking data quality and commit efforts to develop technologies and training materials to enhance consumers' ability to evaluate data quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The descriptive phenomenology of Edmund Husserl studies the structure of consciousness, experience, and meaning. This paper looks at how the phenomenological approach can be put to use by information science researchers interested in the study of documents and document work. It particular, the paper explores how phenomenology can expand both our understanding of the document as object and the document as experienced. Analysis. Phenomenology provides us with an ontology of real and ideal objects in which we can situate our understanding of the document as an object in the world to which our consciousness is attuned. This includes understanding the document as a real object situated in time and space, understanding the essence that is born by that document (that which makes it an instance of a particular object type), and understanding the document as it is experienced in consciousness (how we are conscious of documents as they are brought before our minds). Conclusion. Taking a phenomenological perspective, this paper moves the discussion in document studies from one focused on how people are affected by objects in the world to one that explores how people have a sense of such objects in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The promise and challenge of information management in the humanities has garnered a great deal of attention and interest (Bulger et al., ; Freiman et al., ; Trace & Karadkar, ; University of Minnesota Libraries, ; Wilson & Patrick, ). Research libraries and archives, as well as groups from within the humanities disciplines themselves, are being tasked with providing robust support for information management practices, including helping to engage humanities scholars with appropriate digital technologies in ways that are sensitive to disciplinary-based cultures and practices. However, significant barriers impede this work, primarily because the infrastructure (services, tools, and collaborative networks) to support scholarly information management is still under development. Under the aegis of the Scholars Tracking Archival Resources (STAR) project we are studying how humanities scholars gather and manage primary source materials with a goal of developing software to support their information management practices. This article reports the findings from our interviews with 26 humanities scholars, in conjunction with a set of initial requirements for a mobile application that will support scholars in capturing documents, recreating the archival context, and uploading these documents to cloud storage for access and sharing from other devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past thirty-five years, archivists have worked to establish bodies of knowledge and expertise to help manage and preserve born-digital records. What has been missing from the archival literature is a foundational piece that explicitly explores how the components of a computer work together to create, manage, and store those digital objects, which are later deemed to have long-term or enduring value. Understanding and working with born-digital material requires us to open the computer's black box and become as familiar with computer hardware, application software, system software, and firmware as we have become with earlier writing, recording, and storage technologies. At its heart, this article takes on a role similar to that of a microethnography, whereby the actions to create and save a digital document are grounded in an examination of the sequence of technologies utilized to bring such actions to fruition. In the process, this article brings to life the material traces that are left behind as human and computer interact to create the record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the scholarly communications lifecycle, it is the archive (as place and as collection) that has traditionally functioned as the research laboratory, the source of knowledge for the humanities and its sub-disciplines. This article examines the notion of the archive as revealed through a process of infrastructural inversion, with an emphasis on understanding the working information practices of archivists as a prerequisite to any discussion of humanities infrastructure initiatives. Situating the archive as a form of infrastructure and archival labor as a form of maintenance work generates descriptions of archival systems and practices that shine a spotlight on key negotiations and tensions that adhere in a profession that exists in service of others. In particular, the article and the argument therein set out to describe what will be lost if this archival assemblage of people, practices, activities, artifacts, and structures is set aside rather than ported into any imagining or re-imagining of the humanities of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]