Exclusive: Interview with E-Conservation
Welcome to this very special post, an exclusive interview between the DanCull Weblog and E-Conservation. This interview was conducted simply via email, between myself and Rui Bordalo, the editor of e-conservation magazine. I’d like to say thank you to Rui Bordalo, and the rest of E-Conservation, for agreeing to make this interview.
As regular readers of this blog will be aware I have been a long time reader, and now also a contributor, to e-conservation magazine, and I have been particularly impressed and intrigued by how the group of conservators developed a successful magazine for conservators outside of any official institutional structure, that is both a creative enterprise and full of fascinating content. I have been hooked since issue 1, however, I wanted to find out more about the magazine, and was thrilled when I raised the idea of an interview and it was enthusiastically accepted. I hope that the comments section for this post can be used to further the discussions raised within the interview. Please do consider this a starting point and not an end point in the discussions.
www.e-conservationline.com/
Dan Cull Weblog in Conversation with Rui Bordalo & E-Conservation.
Question 1: If you’d like to start by just giving a short biography of who’s who at e-conservation, and who’s involved in this discussion, and your roles both for e-conservation, and in the wider field of conservation.
Rui Bordalo: First, I would like to say thanks for this initiative. At the magazine we enjoy reading your blog and we have seen it growing during this last year. We are pleased to contribute to it and even though I am the one who is participating in this discussion, I am doing it on behalf of our entire team.
As you already know, the team that founded the magazine is made of conservator-restorers, more precisely Teodora Poiata, Anca Nicolaescu and me (Rui Bordalo). We are the editors but in fact, apart from the positions that we have in the working hierarchy of a publication, we are a team that collaborates closely and takes decisions together. We do have assigned certain roles and duties, which are necessary to keep the magazine running but we’ve come to develop our own “hands-on” management style that is flexible and allows us to carry on with both our professions and the publication. Together with Anca Dina who has joined our team more recently, currently we are four editors, which may seem quite a lot for a bimonthly publication, but we have to share the editorial work since we can only dedicate a part of our time to the magazine. We manage together the magazine preparation process: establish relationships with the authors, receive manuscripts, discuss them with the scientific committee and revise them with the authors, shortly we take care of all the aspects that are involved. Then there are specific duties which require certain qualified skills, such as the production of the magazine which is done by Teodora Poiata (layout) and by Anca Poiata (design), the image management which is done by Radu Matase, etc. We have developed some of these skills in the course of time, as none of us had the previous experience of running a publication, but we succeeded to share the teamwork responsibilities. What comes in as a problem sometimes is the fact that usually we are in different places and we have to manage everything through the internet. As conservators, we all travel and work on-site sometimes. Personally, I am a paintings conservator and during the last 5 years I’ve spent my time between Portugal and London doing a PhD in the application of lasers to the cleaning of paintings. Teodora Poiata is working in mural paintings conservation and currently dividing her time between Romania and Portugal. Anca Nicolaescu is collaborating in conservation projects from Romania and abroad and Anca Dina is involved in projects of mural painting conservation of monuments mainly from Moldavia.
e-conservation magazine: No. 1. (Cover)
Question 2: In this first editorial You (Rui Bordalo) said: “I have long waited for this editorial. Our project, which one year ago was just a dream, finally became real and I believe it has a great potential.” How did the dream come about? How did the team behind the magazine come together? and how did you go about creating content for the first issue?
RB: There is an important aspect here, one which is probably the main reason why this magazine came into being – apart from me, the founders are Romanian and have known each other and worked together since years. They really felt the lack of a distribution platform of information in our field, especially since in Romania there was no easily accessible publication for conservators. At the beginning they thought to make a local electronic publication but from there the idea developed and took its final shape, e-conservation. This is also the reason why the magazine has a lot of Romanian contributors and readers. The reality is that even on international level there is a lack of information among conservators and many of us felt it at a point. What brought us together as a team, and here I refer not only to our editorial board but also to the conservators and other specialists of our scientific committee, was the wish to do something to improve the actual situation. Looking back, I realise that one of the biggest challenges for the magazine was to start without previous experience in publishing, but I think what made us and keeps us going is the idea of free sharing, without aiming to make profit.
You mentioned the first issue, which is very interesting… despite of what is believed, the hardest part was not to gather content for the first issue, as we had time to prepare it. There were already some people interested to publish their work, some that we knew, others that we invited. Studies say that to launch a successful publication one should plan the content of some issues in advance. In fact, the most difficult part for us was to publish an issue each couple of months, keeping on schedule and having good content that would keep readers interested and turn them into future authors. We did receive support and lot of encouragements from the public, but people are generally careful, especially when it comes to electronically distributed information, at a time when websites and publications keep coming and going so often.
Question 3: It seems looking back that the first editorial was a bit of a mission statement! In the same editorial you stated that “e-conservation is a magazine made by conservators for conservators” and “e-conservation is not limited to the electronic pdf file. e-conservation is about dynamism and therefore the magazine is an extension of the website, just like the website is an extension of the magazine.” The term “bidirectional communication” was used, and it is this what I would term creation of community, so necessary to all Web 2.0 projects, that I see also as being in essence a major component of the e-conservation project. I was wondering how you came to appreciate the need for community, and how effective you think the project has been at this bidirectional communication so far?
RB: You are perfectly right, that was the idea of our project. It still is – since we intend to fill a need that conservation community has, we expect and count on the involvement of the people. I must say however, that we expected to create a community that would exchange ideas and collaborate more, but up to this point there is not enough participation. We created the forum to allow people to comment and discuss about articles, to propose topics, to show their interest in certain subjects, etc. but so far this objective hasn’t been entirely achieved. We do receive enough feedback, not public but by email, which makes me think that for some reason, conservators prefer to keep a low profile. Yet, I don’t know if this is entirely true, since I have seen conservators working well in teams and creating great communities in events such as conferences or workshops. I also think that any project takes time to grow and requires involvement from all parts, so perhaps this is the direction we should invest more efforts in.
Question 4: In the editorial of issue 2, you stated: “As John Powell said, the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. We all know how hard conservators confess mistakes but the truth is that sometimes we commit them… ” This is I think an important statement. I think it’s a kind of guiding principle by which conservators should embrace the opportunities that the internet holds for the profession, whether it be publishing such as e-conservation, blogging such as this blog, or other web 2.0 applications. I was wondering if you had any other thoughts on how we as a profession could be more open to talking about mistakes. The one idea that I have in my mind is that the development of a ‘history of conservation’ in which past conservation techniques are studied in and of themselves, and placed in their socio-cultural context and history rather than simply dismissed or mentioned as throwaway comments in reports, could be the start of making this an easier process.
RB: It is never easy to confess mistakes but at the bottom I think it’s a matter of mentality. For example, there is an association of conservator-restorers in Denmark that organises quite often meetings to discuss experiences and errors among their associates. It is truly an example which should be followed by many countries although I doubt southern countries would implement it. Conservators normally associate errors to being bad professionals and they are afraid of being labelled as such. What should be really kept in mind is that the nature of our profession is changing in time. With this I mean that, for example, a methodology of today may be an error of tomorrow. To overcome this “taboo” issue we need first to start talking more openly about it, hoping the mentality will change.
The history of our profession is very important. There are several studies about it although those I know are somehow scattered. One of our recent authors, Hans-Christoph von Imhoff (in issue No. 8), has mentioned that same need of a “History of Conservation” saying that it would be important to interview and study the older generation of conservators still alive. To have a better insight of their techniques, methodologies and materials would be important not only to our profession’s historical reference but also to know why those techniques didn’t work, why they were errors and maybe, who knows, even to reinvent them in the present. This can be done of course, at national and international level, but I think it has been difficult mainly due to lack of proper funding and lack of a concerted effort among researchers and institutions.
Question 5: It is interesting that you mention interviews, as not only are we in the process of one now, but moreover, e-conservation magazine has included several interviews so far, and they were a bit of an inspiration behind this interview. I believe these are incredibly significant forms of (potentially bi-directional) communication that rarely appear in most conservation journals. I was wondering how you came to make interviews, and how you chose who to interview?
RB: Indeed Dan, this form of communication, the interview, has the potential to transmit not only valuable information, but also something from the personality of a person, outside of the formality required by the articles which sometimes don’t say much about their authors. So the interview section is significant in our opinion also, and in fact one of the most pleasant to work on, being bi-directional and more interactive than others, and allowing us to know better those people who have done a lot for our profession. Our wish is to be able to publish an interview in each number as fortunately, today’s communication is fairly simple by electronic means. When it is possible however, we do prefer to make the interviews in person. We started with those professionals whom we had the chance to meet on different occasions and we currently have some more interviews in work. We’d love to hear readers’ suggestions about whom to interview and also to get their help with carrying them on.
www.e-conservationline.com/
Question 6: The magazine has on several occasions discussed the practical side of open-access choices of distribution… at least once stating: “all we have to do is be willing to share and learn” which to my mind is both a mantra for the magazine/website and a call to arms for conservators, but I was wondering what led you to this (creative commons/open access) in the first place?
RB: To distribute the magazine in open access was our objective since the very beginning. We believe that it is the best way possible to truly achieve a significant worldwide readership through the internet, which on its turn would encourage the sharing of knowledge among professionals. We chose Creative Commons (CC) – Some Rights Reserved – as licence to freely disseminate the information but at the same time to safeguard both the rights of the authors and of the magazine. This way, authors not only are able to retain copyright of their work after publication but they can distribute or even republish their papers. Moreover, CC allows licensing the content alongside copyright, so authors can choose what terms best suit their needs. CC is truly the perfect tool to share culture in open access. Before we started with the magazine we have seen some examples of CC licensed works and we have consulted a lawyer to better understand what are the rules and risks of publishing, because our experience was limited to being authors but lacked the editorial perspective. We try to keep everything as simple as possible for our authors and minimise the submission bureaucracy as much as possible. Creative Commons helps a lot in this respect as well.
Question 7: In the editorial for issue 6 you stated: “conservators might soon face the problem that most of the specialised literature in our field is written by non-conservators. Thus, it is my belief that conservators need an attitude change towards publishing as sharing inside specialist knowledge is essential for our field.” Which I believe was a very astute observation, I was wondering whether you think that the tone taken in journals as they have increasingly published so called ‘hard-science’ papers has pushed alternative visions of what constitutes conservation, and conservation papers, out of the journals. I was wondering to what extent you saw e-conservations style, approach, and content, as a means of redressing that balance? As a means of encouraging conservators who might not try to publish their work elsewhere to share? I know I have learnt about a lot of projects I don’t think I would have otherwise seen in English language journals.
RB: Many people have already seen this situation, where scientists and conservation-scientists are taking the lead in conservation literature. In fact I believe it is mostly a problem of education as most conservator-restorers were not educated to make research or to have the stimulus to publish their findings. This is changing in some places but it will still take some time. The same does not happen with scientists, and as scientists have had a growing interest in the conservation and heritage fields it is only normal that they publish very often.
You mention here an interesting aspect that is a bit of a controversy, in my opinion. Salvador Muñoz-Viñas interview is interesting to read in this regard. Science has helped us to understand better the works of art, their degradation and the application of our techniques but we should face its important contribution as a mean to achieve something and not as an end in itself.
Well, this is also related to the difference between scientific journals and magazines. As you know, while the objective of journals is to publish original research, the magazines have the objective to disseminate as much as possible the latest or any interesting information. This may be, for example, new technology that was kept between journal pages and not many know about it, projects that people could be interested in, etc. What we publish may have been already published, it does not have to be scientifically original as journals require. A major issue with journals is that only part of the scientific community has access to them, leaving out exactly the readership that is most interested in that knowledge, the conservators. Scientists could publish scientific data in the appropriate journals but further they could also publish reviews regarding their findings which are of interest for the conservation community. E-conservation’s purpose is to give an easier, open access to the very much needed information which is not easily accessible to conservators, and not to compete with the other publications available in the field. Except for some few national magazines of limited circulation, or international publications that one can only access by being member, there are really not many ways to be informed. We have tried to put in the magazine what we would like to read in any conservation magazine. If that helps redressing the balance, the better.
Question 8: What role do you think open-access/creative commons will have in the future of conservation publishing. Do you think the major organisations (ICON, AIC, IIC, ICCROM, etc) will take up this method of publishing; and are there any that have, that you are aware of?
RB: I hope an important one. The publishing world has changed a lot in the last years and in fact, since we launched 2 years ago, we have seen other publications taking this lead. To start and run a magazine is not easy unless you have the appropriate support, institutional or other. It takes a lot of work, dedication and very important, continuity. If electronic periodicals are not active permanently, they lose readers. As for the non-periodical publications that are made available online by the major organisations, I think it is a great step forward towards sharing knowledge in open access in our field. AIC made an important step in 2001 when they made available the contents of JAIC on the internet but one can’t expect all other associations or institutions to make the same thing. In most associations you have to be a member to receive their publications and I doubt these could be distributed for free in the future since benefits justify membership rates, which help sustain the existence of the association. Concerning international institutes of reference, such as ICCROM, part of their publications are already available online in pdf format. The Getty has also had an admirable attitude in distributing online publications whose print editions were sold out.
Question 9: I personally am very impressed with this concept, and the free distribution, as I have previously mentioned in my blog. It was this concept that initially drew me to the magazine. I was wondering how you came across my blog, and why you listed it on your blog list. As well as how you choose which links you include on your website…. and more importantly are there any links, or projects that you’d like to plug to the readers of this blog?
RB: There are not many active and periodically updated conservation blogs out there. Yours is one of them and I believe I found it by browsing the internet about conservation related topics. Everyone at the magazine found it very interesting thus we decided to include it in the links database. We really appreciate your involvement in the Wikipedia project and I think that is what we should plug attention to. Our field could gain notoriety if only a small percentage of professionals would get involved, and also gain a better representation for the large public and help prevent those “alternative visions of what constitutes conservation” that you were mentioning earlier.
Basically, we link to any website or blog that we consider useful and conservator-restorers could be interested in, that gives at least partially open access to its information.
Question 10: One thing I have been impressed with is being able to learn about projects that wouldn’t normally, at least it seems that way, be covered in an English language journal – such as work from the ‘former eastern bloc’ countries. Was there a conscious decision to invite writers from these areas? How did it come about?
RB: As I had mentioned earlier, we have some articles from Romania due to the close relation that we have with conservator-restorers there and because they are eager to publish. I really like that we’ve been able to offer articles and case studies from a wide variety of countries and I hope people will continue sending material. It is a precious opportunity to learn about other countries heritage, projects, approaches and technologies.
http://conservationevents.com/
Question 11: On a completely different note, could you explain the “Events Page” associated with the website. How does it work, what does it list, and how can people add events to the listings? And also are there any other “lists” (job’s, internships, field schools, etc) that the website currently lists, or would like to list?
RB: At the beginning we had listed on e-conservationline website the events
concerning conservation and related fields but soon we realized that the calendar deserved its own administration, which made easier for us to manage it and allowed the community to contribute. So we created an independent website, www.conservationevents.com, which we are also using for Prorestauro portal. There one can see dozens of forthcoming events, search, and browse per country, month, week, etc. Users can publish their own events after they register an account, however most people still prefer to send us the information by email. The website is entirely dedicated to the events calendar and we do not plan to list other announcements there, but we have sections for jobs and internships on the magazine’s website. In fact, there are already many other mailing lists and websites dedicated to this type of announcements for conservators or museum professionals, so we do not wish to develop independent platforms for these. In my opinion the most helpful and needed thing for conservators would be a database that would gather all useful information in a single place.
Thank you Rui for taking part in this interview, it’s been wonderful to have the opportunity to share information from one part of the conservation community, to another. I hope now others will join in the conversation on the comments or elsewhere on the internet.
