[Feature: Prospects for Digital Archives] Roundtable: What Kind of Archives Enrich Communication?

Currently, "digital archives" are being created by various academic institutions, governments, and companies, and are used by many people. I believe they have become established as a method for making various intellectual achievements available to society, but because they are so diverse, there may be aspects that make it difficult to understand exactly what a digital archive is.

Today, we have invited people involved in digital archives to talk about the current situation and its future.

First, since each of you is involved in digital archives from various institutions and positions, I would like you to talk about how you got involved.

Speaking for myself, when I was an undergraduate student, the "HUMI Project" was launched at Keio to digitize rare books. It was a project started in 1996, the year Keio purchased the Gutenberg Bible, and I joined as a part-time worker in 1998. In the beginning, we scanned film, and since broadband was not yet widespread, I helped build websites and other things to figure out how to make them available online to the general public with a light data capacity.

The Gutenberg Bible was not to be tucked away as a rare book, but to be used as a foundation for various research, so we were also exploring photography techniques. I learned how to take images that could be used for research purposes without damaging the book.

After that, I went to graduate school and decided that I might as well use digitized images for my research. Keio has a class called "Digital Bibliography," and I also wrote a book called "Introduction to Digital Bibliography," but recently it might be easier to call it "Digital Humanities."

In this way, I have experienced the whole process from behind-the-scenes work in the field to publishing and then using it for research.

My involvement also goes back to my graduate school days. At the time, I specialized in Italian Renaissance art and was working on research for an altarpiece in a town called Pesaro, but I got a bit stuck.

When researching as a student in Japan, it is difficult to go to Italy and see the works, but in Italy, not only are the works there, but there are also extensive art history Research Centers and Institutes where you can use important research books and a vast number of photographs of works. I felt it would be tough for me in Japan to compete with European researchers in such an environment.

On the other hand, I thought that if I could access various resources remotely, I might be able to stand on the same playing field. And I thought that people researching Japanese art from overseas might have the same worries and feelings I had about Italian art research. So, I suddenly felt like doing something helpful for those people and started working on digital archives at the Keio University Art Center (KUAC).

Because of this background, when I work on digital archives, I have a fundamental desire to make resources available to various people rather than keeping them to ourselves, so that everyone can be happy and enjoy their research and activities.

Now, at the Museum Commons (KeMCo), I am building a digital archive called Keio Object Hub, where people can search and use the Juku's cultural properties and academic materials in a one-stop shop. I also want to visualize a bit more how archive materials are useful to various people and what kind of people are using them.

I have been working for a long time mainly in collaboration with local people to create content that compiles materials, which is called a digital archive.

The first one I worked on was in 2011, so 14 years have already passed, and it is called the "Hiroshima Archive," which conveys the reality of the Hiroshima atomic bombing to the world. Photos of the faces of many atomic bomb survivors are placed on a map of Hiroshima.

By switching maps, you can see what this place used to be like. For example, you can see that Hiroshima Jogakuin High School, which has the same name, still exists in the place where a girls' school was located before and during the war. By overlaying the open data maps from the time of the war with current maps, you can see what kind of context they are connected in across time.

The materials collected consist of testimonies gathered by local people, such as students of Hiroshima Jogakuin High School, who interviewed survivors out of a desire to record the damage their own town suffered. In this way, content born from connections with local people has been maintained for 14 years in the form of a map.

Similar initiatives are gradually being upgraded. Currently, there is a "Ukraine Satellite Image Map" that we are working on with local creators in Ukraine. It is based on 3D data of buildings damaged in the Ukraine war. This project is also based on the same concept as Hiroshima, but the data handled has changed from 2D photos and testimonies to 3D data.

Another one, which more people know about, is a project called "Rebooting Memories" to colorize monochrome photos, which I have been doing for seven or eight years. The book "War and Pre-war Revived with AI and Colorized Photos," which I published with Anju Niwata as a result of that, is being read quite a bit.

As the latest attempt, since around the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, data recording has become real-time ("Noto Peninsula Earthquake Photogrammetry Map"). On the map released on January 3rd this year, the state of widespread damage, with the situation in the disaster area turned into 3D data, is expressed in an easy-to-understand way. It took only about six hours from the time the data came out from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan to turn it into 3D and make this map.

While Hiroshima was a digital archive recording materials from 80 years ago, for Ukraine it became a few days late, and recently we have become able to create and publish 3D digital maps with a delay of only a few hours. The current situation is that it is becoming a semi-real-time map.

I joined the company in 1982 and have worked for Dai Nippon Printing ever since. In 2015, an Archive Business Project was created in our company. This was about 10 years after Professor Yoshio Tsukio proposed the term "digital archive" around 1996, but we restructured the digital archive business system within the company.

After that, for five years from 2017, as a visiting researcher at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo, I was involved in building social infrastructure by launching two organizations: the Japan Society for Digital Archive and the Digital Archive Promotion Consortium.

From 2021, I was contacted by Nagasaki Prefecture and helped create measures related to digitization, database construction/publication, utilization, and business evaluation/verification as a member of the Information Strategy Consultative Committee for the "Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region," which was registered as a World Heritage site.

I have been involved as a printing company in the construction and utilization of so-called digital archives. Since I joined the company in 1982, when the term "digital archive" did not exist, I have digitized text and images, turned them into databases, and developed search viewers for browsing. Looking back now, I feel that I have been involved in the elements of digital archives from the beginning.

My specialties are supposed to be archaeology and museology, but since I am naturally a contrarian (laughs), my motto is not to be too bound by academic frameworks.

Normally, when people talk about digital archives in archaeology or museums, I think they are concerned with publishing materials and their survey/research results efficiently or in an easy-to-use way, but I am approaching it from a completely different direction.

What I want to focus on is the restrictiveness that arises from creating huge archives based on existing academic frameworks or museum classifications—that is, based on the existing order. By creating such efficient and easy-to-use huge archives, things are overlooked and become invisible; I am turning my eyes toward those things.

If we become able to obtain various information efficiently through archives built by expanding the framework of the existing order, I think our understanding of the world will progress rapidly. But on the other hand, isn't the invisible world also expanding at the same time? From this awareness of the problem, I am instead creating digital archives that are inefficient and full of noise, detours, and irrelevant information.

Instead of cutting out various information that makes up the world from a certain perspective, classifying and systematizing it, and making it possible to perform clean, purposeful searches like a normal archive, I want to expand excessively from a single object or place into various information, sometimes even information that seems irrelevant. I think it's okay to have such archives. I am creating archives while thinking about such things.

Since everyone is in different fields and domains from various positions, I think there are many different viewpoints.

About 30 years have passed since the term "digital archive" began to be used, and as it has been attracting particular attention recently, the revised Museum Act of April last year clearly positions the creation and publication of digital archives as one of the projects carried out by museums.

When we say "creating a digital archive," there are various types, such as those created in collaboration with local people or those created using the achievements of experts, and I think each has its own merits or difficulties. From your respective positions, or looking at other fields, what kind of approach do you feel has future potential and sustainability?

Professor Watanabe, you in particular have achieved results from an early stage in creating photo maps while collaborating with local people. I think it is a truly wonderful initiative, but in reality, I imagine there are various difficult aspects. What do you think?

The case of Ukraine is a little different from before; it is a war that occurred in an era when remote work became commonplace due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was made possible because we could connect online.

On the other hand, in the cases of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Great East Japan Earthquake, if there are no collaborators on the ground, no matter how much we say from Tokyo "let's do it together," they won't move. For the "Hiroshima Archive," local high school teachers were cooperative and said they would carry out activities to record testimonies of survivors as part of the students' club activities, so it started moving.

In the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake's "We Shall Never Forget: Last Moments of Tsunami Victims," the local newspaper Iwate Nippo was in charge of data collection and interviews with local people, and we played the role of finally putting the map together, so we were able to combine things well.

When you say "creating together with local people," it certainly sounds like a beautiful story, but for the local people, it's also a matter of "who are you?" Therefore, I feel that it is something that can only be established if there are members or companies there who can build a relationship of trust with the local people.

For the 3D map of the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, I went to talk to the prefectural office, and they said it would be difficult for the prefectural office to be the main body, but they would support the collaboration between the residents and Professor Watanabe's team. After that, they became active, and the prefectural office staff themselves have been sending 3D data they created.

For example, when explaining to local people or calling for the provision of data, are there times when the local government does something?

We are going to hold an exhibition at the Ishikawa Prefectural Library next January, and that will take the form of being sponsored by the prefecture. The setup is strictly that the University of Tokyo is the organizer. Probably, if the prefecture takes the lead, it becomes top-down. Since the concept is that local people collected data through photo maps, I feel the prefecture understands that and doesn't come forward too much.

To add one more thing, I think the image of data being placed and expressed on this digital map is the driving force that motivates local people. Whether it's the high school students in Hiroshima or the people in Ishikawa Prefecture, when I say that your data will be published to the world by being posted on a 3D map like this, they think, "In that case, I want to do it." I have a sense that when this visual image and the local collaborators mesh well, it starts running.

I think "creating relationships" is very important, not just for things rooted in the community. Keio Object Hub also receives data from various people, but if it's just inorganic, like "please provide data; we will make it searchable," it still doesn't work well.

Behind the data put into a digital archive, there is the labor to create that data and the tremendous effort to pass down the cultural properties and academic materials that are the basis of the data. So, I think it's very important to build rapport, or rather, to have repeated dialogues so that they feel "I'm glad I provided (the data)."

The Hiroshima Archive and the Noto attempts are very good models, aren't they?

Things like building rapport depend a lot on the skills of the listener, but we rely quite a bit on the completed format for that part. When we say, "It will be released to the world in this form," most people get excited.

I'm not very good with people, so I feel like I'm leaving it to this format. It means a format that builds a relationship of trust has been created.

Perhaps they feel happy because they have a real sense that providing data is helping other people.

On medical sites, there is a kind of collective intelligence site called PatientsLikeMe where patients themselves can publish their own medical conditions, and I think it might be similar to that.

At first, it was said that people wouldn't want to put out private things like their own medical conditions, but when we opened the lid, that wasn't the case, and it seems that one characteristic is that they can get a sense of fulfillment from being useful to others.

When war survivors look at the Hiroshima map, they point to the map and say, "I am here." It seems they have a sense of finding their comrades, like "So-and-so is here."

Thinking about it that way, contributing to digital archives seems like it could become a form of social participation. By having a digital archive as an access point, various ways of contributing to society might be created. In the modern age, it might be a platform that can provide an alternative for how to involve oneself in society.

It might be close to what Professor Ando said earlier about jumping over frameworks and having various contexts pulled out.

I am always truly impressed when I see Professor Watanabe's Hiroshima Archive and others.

I am involved in an area called Kanoya City in Kagoshima Prefecture, where I receive information about the war from local people and paste it onto a map ("Kanoya War Archive Map").

Since I don't have the skills myself, I use existing platforms like Stroly and paste the information provided by the community onto the maps I've made, somewhat blindly and without any particular context.

Earlier, the words participation or contribution were mentioned, and I think that awareness is very important. What I am making doesn't attract that much attention, but even so, it is sometimes picked up by newspapers and such. When it is picked up like that, I think the local people feel a little bit happy.

There, if you raise the hurdle by saying it must be an academic achievement or it must be accurate information, a sense of participation won't easily emerge. If you call out in a flatter way, saying "please give me any information anyway, and if there are no legal problems, I will post it," various information will gather, and I think the sense of participation will increase.

I feel that is one way of doing things, especially when creating digital archives rooted in the community.

From your position of developing this as a company, what do you think?

From the perspective of maintaining relationships and social participation, in our company, I think it's the part of museum-school collaboration. As a result of the enforcement of the revised Museum Act, various museums have come to prepare various educational materials in accordance with school curriculum guidelines.

In the past, it felt like we just released a search system and that was it, but now I feel that we are stepping one or two steps further. For example, we also participated in a S×UKILAM collaboration workshop conducted by Professor Masao Oi of the National Institutes for the Humanities.

To be honest, it is a very difficult problem how companies can enter things like open data for profit. While trying that, from the position of providing a platform, we are introducing something called "DNP Midokoro Cube."

There is one that plots images of E-sugoroku (picture board games) published by the "Tokyo Gakugei University Educational Content Archive" of the Tokyo Gakugei University Library into a cube shape. The vertical axis is the era, the bottom is the form of E-sugoroku (Tobi-sugoroku and Mawari-sugoroku), and the side is the classification, and E-sugoroku are plotted in that three-dimensional space to be used as teaching materials for classes.

The word excitement was used earlier, and children get very excited when shown things this way. This becomes an example where library staff, school teachers, and companies all bring their own contributions to build it up.

Even if the underlying system is the same, does it change depending on how each person uniquely creates their "Midokoro Cube"?

It can be created freely. Since we provide a CMS function that can be created with just a web browser, we have prepared an environment where teachers, museum staff, and library staff can easily create them.

It's not just about publishing and being done, but how it will be used. In this way, digital archives are now spreading and becoming established, but it costs money to create and maintain them. In that context, I also think the social significance is very large.

I think there are parts that lead to things like civic pride for education and the general public, but what do you think is the most important point?

I held an exhibition in Nagasaki this August, and it was covered on TV. What was characteristic was that many elementary, junior high, and high school students came. Since the latest technology such as VR is broadening the entrance, they are looking at it with interest. For memories of the war, since the younger generation will bear the future society, I definitely want them to see it, and that generation can be attracted by expression technology.

On the other hand, what surprised me was that many atomic bomb survivors came in wheelchairs. Many of them were like, they were eating at a nursing home and came because this exhibition was on the TV news.

Digital technology reaches children directly, but atomic bomb survivors and people who don't usually use digital tools can only be reached for the first time by being conveyed through media such as TV and newspapers. If it's just placed on the web, it won't reach these people. So, I feel a sense of response in holding these kinds of exhibitions.

I think things often go well if you think of a digital archive not as a goal to be published on the web, but as a tool for creating communication in real space.

I think what you just said is very important. It's not that other things are unnecessary because there is a digital archive, but it's important that TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, museums, and libraries all exist, and that digital media is properly among them.

The reason I think digital archives are absolutely necessary now is that in the modern age, digital archives open up channels for various people to connect with and rediscover museum works and activities.

Of course there are other channels to encounter museum works, but you absolutely cannot ignore digital information now. I think we must properly release what we have inherited into the digital world, which occupies a significant part of our daily experiences, and maintain opportunities for encounters with works and materials.

That's the important part. When people talk about digital archives, they perform some kind of research or problem-solving based on accumulated information. I don't think it's the case that we aren't doing it for that convenience, but I think it's not good if the path to research or problem-solving is completed by making digital archives convenient and efficient.

I mentioned order earlier, but digital archives are, after all, created with a certain purpose. The information collected is purposeful, its classification is purposeful, and its configuration and directories are all purposeful. Naturally, utilization is included in that purpose, but if the way of utilization becomes uniform, it won't deviate from there.

To make people deviate from that and notice things outside the order, I think we can consider things like putting in extra information outside the purpose, or inviting people to want to touch the actual site or object, or leading them to dialogue between people.

This is my ideal and hasn't been realized, but I want to aim for the use of digital archives to arouse interest in that place or object and make people want to access the actual site or object. Since the actual site or object can be seen and thought about in various ways and is also a place where those intersect, I think dialogue will be born there.

It's not about leading to a single conclusion through that dialogue; especially with things like war, there are various viewpoints, and incompatible things also exist. But those are things that must coexist, and the meaning lies in having dialogue rather than division.

I believe that if we can lead to creating opportunities, even little by little, where people encounter various viewpoints and ways of thinking through objects and places and dialogue is born between people, that will also become one major role of digital archives.

I think digital archives encouraging dialogue is an ideal form. If you were to try to realize that in a digital space, what would it be like?

Dialogue is naturally born in places like lectures, workshops, or surveys and tours of ruins. I think it's important to first invite people to such places with digital archives.

Another thing, I think that the exchange of various opinions on SNS, for example, will also be an entrance to dialogue. SNS inevitably becomes confrontational or divisive, or a single opinion is just spewed out in a state where there is no possibility of connection, but I think that if we make an effort, expanding and enlarging dialogue using SNS is by no means impossible.

Watanabe: That is an opinion I sympathize with very much. Colorized photos are quite a catalyst on SNS. For example, the colorized photo of the mushroom cloud of the Nagasaki atomic bomb uploaded on August 9th gets a huge number of replies.

Things like "I felt this way" or "My grandmother was a victim." Eventually, a discussion starts between the people who replied, about what Japan's current nuclear policy is like or what they think about nuclear-armed states, and sometimes a jab comes saying "stop colorizing" (laughs).

On SNS, dialogue usually doesn't happen much because people interact only with text and just say their piece, but when you sandwich in one digital archive material that acts as a catalyst, people suddenly go into dialogue mode.

On the other hand, I also feel a desire to slow down the speed of communication centered on SNS. I have a physical sensation that SNS is too fast compared to the timeline held by digital archives.

For example, I hope it becomes more visible that communication not apparent on digital platforms is happening externally—such as people going somewhere and talking together triggered by a digital archive.

Everyone ends up having their conversations solely on SNS (laughs).

Exactly. Even though I think people are surely making phone calls, passing letters, or chatting over tea, those things are still hard to see in the periphery of digital archives.

It would be great if a movement to actually visit those places naturally develops, triggered by what people see on SNS.

For example, I think one direction for creating a sense of participation would be for the coordinators to pick up short sentences posted on SNS and reflect them in the archive.

The creators of the digital archive could find some way to pick up reactions and differing opinions and connect them. By doing so, the words appearing on SNS might link together organically, in a sense, and become a space for dialogue.

Something like this? This is a map I created (Great East Japan Earthquake Tweet Mapping) by collecting all tweets over the 24 hours from the occurrence of the earthquake on March 11, 2011. Each individual tweet doesn't say much, but when viewed as a whole, you can see what everyone was feeling and what actions they took at that time.

NHK is currently conducting an attempt similar to what Mr. Ando mentioned; every March, they seem to identify one person from this map and interview them. If left as a continuous stream, it flows away as ephemeral communication, but by stocking it like this, you can go back and slowly reflect on your feelings at that time.

It's like 'stock-type communication.' I feel it would be very interesting if new communication designs were born starting from digital archive content.

Ando: And then, I suppose it's about feedback. It's difficult to have two-way communication. Even if we ask for any opinions via Facebook or email, only a very few come in. I'd like to receive much more information, but it often doesn't come where I want it and comes in abundance where I don't need it (laughs).

We create various digital archives for local governments on a contract basis. Within that, for museum digital archives and the like, we don't just finish by creating and publishing them; we try to implement real-world measures alongside digital ones, such as holding workshops or briefing sessions for school teachers.

Furthermore, when holding a special exhibition, we propose archiving the exhibition itself. With conventional digital archives that only publish primary materials, it's often difficult for the general public to understand or they fail to gain interest.

That's why special exhibitions are held where curators provide easy-to-understand explanations, and we suggest archiving that. Our company provides a system that easily turns the entire exhibition space into a panoramic VR experience. KeMCo also uses Matterport to save 3D data for every exhibition.

I believe archiving exhibitions is important not only for visitors but also for the education of curators. For example, how to create an exhibition narrative or how to design a venue could previously only be learned by visiting many exhibitions. Therefore, learning opportunities were greatly influenced by the number of museums in one's location. However, if you can see various exhibitions in VR, for instance, and they include making-of commentaries by the curators in charge, they can become excellent textbooks.

Speaking of VR, I believe DNP is doing a lot of things. The ways of showing content are constantly changing.

The DNP Content Interactive System 'Midokoro Series' realizes ways of showing content unique to digital that cannot be achieved in reality. It is a solution utilizing new technologies such as 3D data, smart glasses, head-mounted displays, VR, XR, the metaverse, and AI. It is used not only by museums, art galleries, and libraries but by corporations in general. Among them, I think the 'Midokoro Cube' I introduced earlier has had a particularly large response.

How to show valuable content to what kind of people. DNP's concept phrase is 'Creating the Future Norm.' As part of that, we are proposing various ways to show digital archives. As an evolved version of 'Midokoro Cube,' there are things like entering inside the cube yourself to experience a greater sense of presence, or the 'Midokoro Gallery XR Type,' which represents an exhibition space in a metaverse where you enter as an avatar.

This is a similar angle to DNP, but in the Watanabe Lab's latest project, there is a system where you can travel through old photos with your own avatar. It treats photos as pseudo-3D, allowing you to walk toward the background.

The Hiroshima Archive map was a technology that became universal around 2010. The Hiroshima Archive was created in an era when Google Earth became free and anyone could get close to any place they liked. Then, colorization AI emerged in 2016.

For this current project, a solution that allows you to create your own avatar in 10 minutes came out about the year before last, so we have incorporated that technology. In other words, by combining the expression technologies that become commonplace in each era with past materials, we can re-express them in a way that reaches people's hearts, even if the original materials in the digital archive are the same.

I think in an era where entering virtual spaces with avatars is becoming the norm, if we don't re-express things using such means, they will become outdated.

In that case, as technology changes by leaps and bounds, choosing what to use becomes extremely important.

In the case of the Watanabe Lab, I leave it to the graduate students. After all, I'm a senior, so my perspective is old (laughs). Graduate students are younger and have fresher sensibilities, so if you let them run free, so to speak, they come up with surprising things.

The avatar I mentioned earlier was also something they had created before I knew it. They were like, 'You can walk in this, you know.'

When we say 'archive,' I think one meaning is to first organize and accumulate information, but I believe we need to think about how to express that separately.

For me personally, information gathers through relationships with various people. I proceed while thinking about how to present that information so that communication can be established among many people.

Also, for my part, I provide all the collected data to the local government once a project is over and tell them they are free to use it thereafter.

I can't do anything grand, but the expression part inevitably has to change along with changes in technology and other factors. Otherwise, it won't attract interest. I think one important aspect of technology is that 'newness' itself has the power to draw interest. Even with a topic like 'war,' interest doesn't easily spread. But when you involve new technology, various people certainly take an interest. As long as they are interested, I can talk about anything from there.

When I look at Mr. Watanabe's projects, I'm drawn in with an 'Ooh!' If that leads to even a slight expansion of interest in Hiroshima as a place or the experiences of the people of Hiroshima, I think that can be called one of the great effects of digital archives. I always look at them with admiration, thinking I'd like to try something like that (laughs).

As an example realized with new technology, there is 'Midokoro Walk,' which utilizes 'Redirected Walking,' a technology supervised by Associate Professor Narumi and Assistant Professor Matsumoto of the Kuzuoka-Narumi Laboratory at the University of Tokyo.

It involves high-definition 3D digitization of the 45-meter ceiling painting in the Richelieu site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), where users walk through a VR space using a head-mounted display to view the painting. You can experience a simulation of climbing a virtual spiral staircase and walking along a viewing path at a height of 6 meters.

I tried this. It was quite scary.

Thinking you might fall?

It replaces the senses so that walking one and a half turns (540 degrees) around a pole becomes a 2-meter ascent and 90-degree turns to the left and right using a virtual spiral staircase.

Watching people doing it from the side, everyone walks very tentatively (laughs).

We are using the broad term 'digital archive,' but there are many different layers, with parts that change rapidly according to the times and parts that don't change much. At the very least, the people who create and maintain them need to be conscious of the existence of these layers and the different cycles they each have, or things won't go well.

A challenge with digital archives until now has been that the expression layer and the data storage layer were inseparable, so when the expression became dated, even the data lost its appeal. The question is how to design it so that the storage can be reused while connecting it to new expressions.

A challenge for digital archives that has been constantly mentioned is how to develop human resources. I think it's quite difficult for one person to handle everything from the expression itself to the accumulation of data and management such as securing budgets. There is a qualification called 'Digital Archivist,' but having been involved daily, what are your thoughts on that?

I program and create things like the Hiroshima Archive myself, but there is a team of Watanabe Lab graduates who developed a system that can create digital maps without coding. When I give assignments to first and second-year students at the University of Tokyo using that, they create some quite amazing works. The student who created a 3D archive of the history of nuclear weapons development was a medical student who was interested in radiation medicine and knew a lot about the history of nuclear weapons.

At the University of Tokyo, the College of Arts and Sciences is where students are before they split into various specialties, so if we have the students learning there experience digital archives once, people with that literacy will take on various positions in the future. It is probably important to scatter people who know the significance of digital archives and the joy of using data to convey messages to people throughout various parts of society.

This is something that is normally achieved in architecture. This is because we have experienced architecture ever since we were born. Everyone also has their own opinions on fashion. I think we must nurture people who have their own opinions on digital archives, regardless of their field.

In that sense, the phrase 'democratization of digital archives' is something I'm interested in. I believe what I'm doing now is strictly an expression of information presentation by an individual. I think it would be good if the layer of archive expression was something anyone could create.

The reason I stuck with Stroly was that I could introduce it to various people. I can introduce it saying, 'You can do this, so please try it,' and then stories like 'I tried it' come up. How will these individual-led archives develop from here? I personally feel great potential there; what do you think?

Meaning even non-specialists can do it.

Of course, I think we need to create something like a platform, but if such a thing exists, many people will likely join in, and I think it would be possible to summarize and archive the information collected by each person somewhere.

It would be a form where information collected by individuals is accumulated across the entire platform and can be reused. Naturally, there would be copyright issues, but if those are resolved, even archives sent out by individuals could come together to form a large archive, from which new perspectives or ways of thinking might be born.

If individuals creating and sharing archives leads to the formation of a large archive, I feel that would become one vision for the future of digital archives.

Nowadays, it has become individual-led due to SNS. Dr. Masanori Aoyagi, Chairman of the Digital Archive Promotion Consortium, mentioned that Cookpad is also a fine digital archive.

However, on the other hand, there is the question of how we as a company should create such a trend more drastically. After all, employment must be created. I don't think there is yet a situation where someone can get a job somewhere just because they obtained a Digital Archivist qualification.

Digital archives are also evolving, but I feel they are a bit featureless and lack a 'face.' You can't see who created them for what purpose, or what kind of people are involved. So, to put it abstractly, I want to give digital archives a bit more of a face.

Like a collection of recipes, each archive would share the people who created it, the purpose, the method, and the content. Then, if we can see what kind of digital archives exist in the world, from public ones to grassroots ones, various people might be able to find a digital archive they can get involved in or participate in.

Unlike fashion or music, I think one reason digital archives don't quite take off is the lack of a 'sense of ownership.' It's hard to create a point of contact that links strongly to oneself. I feel that archives that put their personality front and center could also be a trigger for various people to get involved.

Since I come from an architectural background, to use an analogy: there are ready-built houses, there is architecture created by architects, there are buildings built by general contractors, and there are also things like self-building where people renovate their own homes.

In digital archives, for example, DNP is acting as the general contractor, and I am doing one-off work as an architect. But there are currently few people who renovate their rooms through self-building.

That's why I think 'giving it a face' and then making it part of daily life is probably important. I feel that if the image spreads that digital archives are actually so closely involved in our lives—that living equals archiving—then such a market will naturally develop.

Even in the world of games, for example, like 'Animal Crossing,' I think people are becoming accustomed to designing the world they live in with a certain amount of individuality.

Creating a place for individual information sharing in that way is not so difficult technically, as long as a path is established. After that, if we reduce the risk of sharing such information, I think quite a few things where you can see the 'face' will emerge.

I completely agree with 'seeing the face.' Just as books have a colophon, digital archives should have a 'digital colophon.' It's the idea of properly recording and publishing who created it, when, and for what purpose to ensure authenticity, but based on this conversation, it seems we need something like the significance or pride of those involved—like the staff credits in an anime production.

It becomes proof of achievement.

Like getting scouted through a digital archive, with someone saying, 'You made that? That's cool, why don't you come work for us?' (laughs).

It would be good if it becomes natural for children to say they created a digital archive for their summer independent research project starting from elementary school.

Independent research is good, but it could be a bit more fashionable. Making something using a digital archive and boasting that it's cool.

Competing over style.

If we can get to the point of showing off, I think it will catch up with music and fashion.

Do you know 'Shimauma Print'? You can easily make books from photos. My wife makes books of the archived photos of our son and daughter that have accumulated in Google Photos every year and distributes them to relatives (laughs).

That is also probably a utilization of digital archives. It would be good to have that level of activity incorporated into classes at elementary schools. I want people to experience the feeling that there are many valuable materials in digital archives and that you can make interesting things using them.

It's just that we are calling them 'digital archives'; most people might already have the concept itself.

That's true.

I've had a dream for a while of a 'Digital Archive Koshien.' Once a year, elementary and junior high school students would archive their local history or current state, turn it into digital content, and present it.

Originally, education is conducted where lower elementary school students research and present things about their neighborhood as part of regional studies, but as a national version of that, they would create and present regional digital archives. I think it would be great if that could be done every year.

Like boasting about 'our town.'

A format like a national choral competition would also be good.

Maybe we should just stop calling it a "digital archive" (laughs).

Exactly. I've been wondering for a long time if there's a better name. It feels a bit like "cultural property."

It is quite stiff, isn't it?

At most, it should be about as long as "YouTube."

A stylish and cool digital archive that blends into daily life. I don't know what it would be named, but if it takes root in the way we've discussed today, I look forward to the future.

When I talk about digital archives in my classes, I tend to focus on professional human resource development or comparisons with the United States. However, today I rediscovered that it is very important for everyone to feel close to them in a natural way that blends into everyday life.

Thank you very much.