Our funding from NHPRC supported the opportunity to engage an archivist with strong technical expertise to assess Social Feed Manager (SFM) and offer recommendations for how it can support archivists building social media archives. Christopher Prom, Assistant University Archivist at University of Illinois, began working with us last fall and we have greatly benefitted from his insights into how to improve SFM. We are pleased to share his final report, Social Feed Manager: Guide for Building Social Media Archives.
Chris’s report walks through how an archivist might use SFM, understanding both its advantages and limitations. In addition to helping archivists build collections with the tool, he offers use cases for SFM and thoughts on shaping local services related to social media archiving. Other topics the report addresses include preservation and access concerns for social media collections, descriptive metadata and packaging recommendations, and other tools available for social media collecting. The report wraps up with recommendations for libraries and archives, software developers, and the community and funders.
We’re deeply appreciative of the work Chris has accomplished to create a resource supporting and motivating archivists in the important work of archiving ephemeral social media. Our conversations with him over the past year have helped us make SFM a better-documented and more impactful tool to the community. While we encourage you to read the whole report, we’ll be highlighting excerpts of the report over the next several weeks as standalone blog posts.