Archives: Anchors For Attention

In a world of perpetual data overload, [curation] implies information design and selectivity: the channeling, filtering, and organization into intelligible and usable information; the digging up of new or long ignored cultural corpora. Most of these corpora are simply sitting in storage: less than 1% of the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent colle... See more

The web has an almost infinite capacity for storage and memory yet its prevailing use is an acceleration of ephemerality. The reasons for this are complex to say the least (of which financial short term gain is probably the most prevalent). But this doesn’t mean the tendency can’t be resisted. Perhaps books as well as their online siblings could be... See more

The ingredients of ‘good’ curation

I think great curation comes down to five key elements that span the processes of searching, selection and contextualizing:

1. Preservation: Caring for, reviving or resurfacing things that might otherwise be lost or forgotten in archives or streams.


2. Connection: Inspiring moments of surprise –, “I didn’t think of that

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