Working with Digital Records: Developing Tool Support
Andy Crabtree, Andy French, Chris Greenhalgh, Tom Rodden and Steve Benford
School of Computer Science & IT, University of Nottingham,
Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK.
Email address of corresponding author: axc@cs.nott.ac.uk
Abstract. An ongoing strand of research in e-Social Science is directed towards understanding the potential of new forms of digital record to support social science inquiry. In this paper we address the challenges raised by this programme in the effort to understand interaction in emerging digital environments. Digital records generated through participants' interactions provide new resources to support ethnographic inquiry. Building on and extending prior research in the field, we outline specific requirements for tools to support the work whereby digital records are made into objects that support ethnographic inquiry. We review the `work that makes digital records work' to highlight the kinds of operations that are performed on digital records as a feature of this work, which in turn highlight areas for technical support. In unpacking the work implicated in the use of digital records we not only identify requirements shaping the development of e-social science applications, we also uncover and articulate a significant substantive finding to emerge from this kind of research: namely, the fundamental difference between the recorded order of events and the `real world, real time' interactional order of events and the implications this has for continued study of interaction in emerging digital environments.
