ArchEthno - a new tool for sharing research materials and a new method for archiving your own research

Abstract

The archiving of ethnographic material is generally considered a blind spot in ethnographic working methods which place more importance on actual investigations and analysis than on how archives are constructed. A team of computer scientists and ethnographers has built an initial tool for sharing ethnographic materials, based on an SQL relational data model that suited the first survey processed but proved difficult to transpose to other surveys. The team developed a new tool based on dynamic vocabularies of concepts which breaks down archiving into three stages. Firstly ethnographers can select and contextualise their survey materials; secondly they structure them in a database according to the research question discovered during their survey; finally, they share this data with other researchers subject to the opinion of an ethics committee whose members are competent in ethnography.