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© The Author(s) 2017. An archaeological site is a palimpsest in which the evidence of the depositional episodes is destroyed through the excavation processes; all that remains are the artefacts and their documentary evidence manifested in registers, datasets, dig diaries and reports. While the reports may represent the end product of a specific excavation, the archaeological record tells a story; it is interpretative and dynamic, with later excavations adding new knowledge and narratives. Museums preserve the artefacts but unless the documentary evidence is preserved in standard formats, it cannot be easily re-used by the archaeology community to create that knowledge; nor can museums provide the narratives for the general public whose cultural heritage it is. This article presents a case study from the Ness of Brodgar excavations that examines possibilities for reconciling one part of the data of an archaeological dig, the small finds register (SFR) and its sparse amount of descriptive metadata, with the potentiality of data re-use and with the requirements of a museum that may have custody of the artefacts. It maps and enriches messy domain-specific ontologies to standard archaeological and cultural heritage ontologies and taxonomies using simple natural language processing, linked open data and the museum CIDOC conceptual reference model (CRM). This research, in examining the application of ontology mapping tools, explores common practices and processes that are useful in any discipline within the cultural heritage domain.

© 2018 Elsevier Inc. Governments for most of recorded history have surrounded their information and decision-making with a culture of secrecy. By the latter half of the 20th century western liberal democracies, driven by right-to-know movements, slowly moved away from secrecy towards more openness of government through public access to its information. Australia, with a series of reforms beginning in the late 1970s, declared in 2010 that government information was a national resource, and public access was the default position. This paper, by providing a history of the Australian Commonwealth legislative and regulatory reforms, their impetus and interpretations, explores the ebb and flow of openness and the intended and sometimes unintended, consequences for traditional government secrecy. Using the complete freedom of information datasets made available by these reforms, the paper presents an insight into government attitudes to openness by providing access to its information. These datasets also enable research into government and bureaucratic actions to pushback against these reforms for pragmatic or ideological reasons. The paper concludes that although there continues to be worrying vestiges of secrecy, on balance, Australia has achieved much in countering a culture of secrecy and the delivering more openness of government.

© 2018, Springer International Publishing AG. Western culture has developed based on notions that truth, by overcoming falsehood, underpins democracy. Libraries and librarians have played an important part in the provision of information to support democratic processes. This study explored information services offered by the small number of public librarians whose role is to provide information services to employees of local governments, elected representatives and to the general public in Sydney, Australia and their perceptions of their role in supporting the potential for civic literacy to contribute to the quality of public policies and democracy. In the interviews, librarians emphasised the importance of awareness-raising of their role in providing information; some perceived opportunities to highlight existing partnerships or to develop new ones; and community discussions of fake news were seen to give scope for repositioning the services of librarians. The regime of truth relating information access to democratic principles has not yet been replaced.

© 2016 Elsevier Inc. The current trend in the delivery of government information online is predicated on the belief that it will enable improvements in the provision of government services and citizens' participation in democratic processes. Government policy in this matter is wrapped in the rhetoric of public accessibility, that is, it must be easy to find, to access and to use. This paper draws upon a case study to explore the validity of this rhetoric; it uses Pierre Bourdieu's concept of society as a metaphorical game in which different players, government and citizens, play with different rules, a situation that can result in mismatches and conflicts in expectations and beliefs. Societal understanding of accessibility to government information is more nuanced and multidimensional than accessibility as an institutional practice within government departments, and requires high levels of digital and civic literacies. The case study findings demonstrate that accessibility did not meet the expectations of a group of university students who were both digitally and civically literate but were not able to find documents mandated to be published. The research concludes that there is a gap between the assumptions of the providers of government information and the expectations of their users; this disparity raises issues of social justice that will need to be bridged if government policies for online information delivery are to fulfil their objectives and rhetoric.

© 2016, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how keeping the records of social networking sites (SNS) communication for secondary analysis institutes a new type of memory practice, one that seeks both to capture shared public memories and form new cultural understandings. Design/methodology/approach – Using a framework of documentary and memory practices the study conducts a qualitative content analysis of SNS communications collected from Facebook, GooglePlus and Twitter during a national event. It combines a content analysis of the communications with the analysis of their materiality and form to investigate potential contributions of SNS to social and cultural memory including their subsequent custodianship. Findings – The study finds that the message architecture and metadata of different social networks is comparable and collectively evidences differing aspects of social events to document their unique discourse. Findings demonstrate the contribution SNS is making to social memory and a framework for understanding how SNS in being incorporated into cultural memory practice is presented. Originality/value – This is one of the few studies that analyses a range of messages from differing SNS in order to understand their impact on cultural memory and the documentary practices of memory institutions.

This article is a personal reflection based on the author's experience of visiting the Ajanta Caves in India and what they mean to the author -- as documents, as evidence, and as social and cultural heritage.

Introduction. This study investigates the challenges that arise when social media are acquired as an information resource to be maintained, studied, re-purposed and re-used. The aim of the research is to understand how the information architecture of the messages contributes to social interactions; how the record of an event might be collected and understood; and how knowledge of architecture can contribute to other social studies. In doing so, the research contributes to an understanding of the custodianship of an increasingly important cultural document. Method. A qualitative media analysis was undertaken of real time social media feeds documenting a significant national event, the flooding of the Riverina in Australia during March 2012. By combining a qualitative content analysis of communications with analysis of their materiality and form, the investigation presents an integrated approach for understanding the social dimensions of information architecture. Analysis. During the flood, communications were sampled from Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter activity streams encapsulated in standardised metadata, allowing the same questions to be asked across each stream. Results. The architecture of messages, communicative intent of authors and topics of conversation are presented, reporting on the organisation of knowledge in social media and demonstrating how different social media document the same event differently. Conclusions. The research departs from the direction of other studies in social media and crises management, with their attention on improving communications, to investigate the social arc of communication between people, raising new and important directions for library and information science.