POST: Operationalizing Minimal Computing Values Through Shared Computing-Platform Development: A Case Study of DigitalArc and Opaque Publisher

Kalani Craig (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Michelle Dalmau (Indiana University Bloomington), and Sean Purcell (University of California, San Francisco) have published “Operationalizing Minimal Computing Values Through Shared Computing-Platform Development: A Case Study of DigitalArc and Opaque Publisher” on In the Library With the Lead Pipe.

The article discusses the authors’ experiences working on two minimal computing archive projects, DigitalArc and Opaque Publisher, providing a useful case study of building minimal computing tools and hosting them on GitHub along with a critical analysis of their approach and the wider practices of archival and minimal computing work.

From their abstract:

This article explores how minimal computing principles guided the parallel web development of two related but distinct publishing platforms, DigitalArc and Opaque Publisher.  DigitalArc, a community-driven digital archive and exhibit platform, was developed in response to principles governing post-custodial archiving, taking it one step further to ensure communities maintain ownership of their materials and their digital artifacts. The Opaque Publisher, originally developed in support of a born-digital dissertation, adapts DigitalArc to support refusal theory for scholars who have to negotiate the tensions between using unethically obtained evidence in support of their research with moral objections to a lack of informed consent. At first glance, the use cases for each platform seem different, but both are providing mechanisms for individuals-by-proxy and communities to assert control over how their respective stories are shared.

Those interested in minimal computing and creating digital archives would find the article a useful example and resource for critical work being done in those fields.