a virtual city archive
http://mumbaiopendata.org/ strategies a virtual archive for the city of Mumbai and its Metropolitan Region [MMR]. As an archive the platform aims to record or form a repository, library of information and data about the region. The site tires to be a central location on all available Mumbai specific content and space for ongoing city projects. Material accessed aims for either to be available as bibliographic information or hosted wherever possible and varying content types. For this stage of the proposal, research evaluates the existing information landscape of the city online via review of six recognised city information centres and tests the feasibility of Mediawiki as an application that could be customised towards data and information archival. The project is enthused in form between online initiatives such as http://data.gov.in/, https://archive.org/, http://www.wikipedia.org/ and the instituted physical city archive at the Maharashtra State Archives Department, Elphinstone College. Open data undertakings have encouraged datasets to be made accessible towards unrestricted usage in research, application building and several varying sectors where deemed desired. Between the Internet Archive and Wikipedia, both projects envisions the record of information and knowledge created to assemble one of the largest repositories and encyclopaedia available.
Planning, laying implementation guidelines for the archive is an extension to work on ongoing personal studies of information and its construct of the city. “give me all your data” or conversation stands of similar tunes could be heard along intuitional premises whenever there is a request to conduct a city specific study. This condition is squared in perspective of happenings in architectural schools, therefore methods of observing collecting and further constructing knowledge thus is imperative of being part of this system. Mostly due to lack of adequate methods and subsequent understandings to access information & data, city content is considered sparse. As a result the residue left behind to the entity deemed a project of the city is mostly an archive in itself. Partly to overcome the bearings of a decade of pile up and defecting many a request in complete data transfer a reflection brought about the possibility of a “portfolio of data”. A self-contained environment that in addition to serving as my dissemination requirements possibly brings about other interested participants into the conversation of content about the city. A precursor to the formation of this social network is to record available and contributing agencies to the information cauldron that is Mumbai. The archive to the city therefore begins with formulating existing contributions and their subsequent form to an information landscape. Frameworks of locating city content in conventional known and accessible virtual archives for the moment at least is a reference point of collating material that has been of that of the city and its organisational methods.
The project formally is considered to be the second phase to the KRVIA Fellowship award for a research titled – the grammar of knowledge, a case for mumbai – that tries to look into the conditions under which information becomes associated with the city. The outcome was an identification of a selection of forms of information order – Conversations/ Data/ Geography/ Instruction/ Landmarks/ Layers/ Regulations/ Representations – applied in construct of a/ the Mumbai Research. https://sites.google.com/a/machimach.com/on-archives/00-synopsis – details at this section of the project lists the processes and development of ideas to have lead up to this stage. Google sites as a repository was tested and was considered inept as it was incapable of handling fluid deep navigation and known technical snag of sustaining sites beyond a thousand pages. https://twitter.com/mumbaiopendata was set up approximately the same time as the domain of the archive has been activated. The account follows #Mumbai and occasionally tweets images, news and found items under the hashtag. A blog on tumblr, http://mumbaiopendata.tumblr.com/ appropriated form a previous reference repository forms another tested model. Both twitter and the blog format due to its linear framework has been considered impractical due to the envisioned scale and lack of customisations possible.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki a result of the success of Wikipedia has become synonymous as the application to have facilitated the creation of an active network of contributors who developed, curated and efficiently maintained content towards an international all-encompassing information repository. With learnings gleaned from the previous iterations of an urban archive assemblage the foray into MediaWiki as an application is pursued. There could/ should be other variants and possibilities in virtual urban information archiving but the appeal to attempt this application is to bring along the image of the wiki as the enabler of an archive gathered together by a collective. Though significantly complex and deep rooted than the previous platforms tried, in terms of possibilities the proposal ties to plan a repository with the imposed limits of the system allocated by MediaWiki towards ordering it. As an archive several variations of the framework have been tried and is an outcome of the associated platform for the selected instance. This will be the first attempt to critically look and formulate existing city content as per application formalities.
Alpha version of the site is positioned as planning, testing and modelling sections of the proposed city archive. Presently the domain mumbaiopendata.org and the space required for hosting has been purchased and registered for three years. A test installation of mediawiki application has been done at the domain as of now. Broadly work on the archive could be demarcated into two categories of a) platform management and b) information sourcing. Moderate customisation of the application needs to be done. This task extends into three areas of i) access modalities, ii) content indexing and iii) overall look and feel of the site. Stock package is to be studied for a draft manual towards site usability and creating of enabling mechanisms towards collaborations. Initial pursuits in obtaining services of a developer well acquainted with mediawiki codes hasn’t been successful. A second round of a broader requests for technical partnerships will be invited and services paid for if deemed feasible. Only time and expertise is expected as most anticipated costs have already been accounted for. For this instance the duality of tasks is maintained i.e. of application proficiency and content acquisitions are considered distinct.
Stated in the proposal, urban research as understood is extended from requirements of engagements in the city from the disciplines of architecture and urban planning. This inclination therefore positions the investigation towards existing repositories that have conventionally been referred or to show up during reference exercises. Listed are the six identified spaces accessed online that contains Mumbai material in varying capacities. Each of these sites firstly would be mapped for its content as accessed in its existing location as per type and nature of retrieval. In essence an audit on city based content that is disseminated by the following sites is the basis for a method towards locating them in the archive.
TIFR Mumbai Pages _ http://theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/
Karmayog Mumbai Information _ http://www.karmayog.org/mumbai/
MCGM _ http://mcgm.gov.in/
UDRI _ http://udri.org/
YUVA Urban Mumbai _ http://www.yuvaurbanindia.org/mumbai.html
TimeOut Mumbai _ http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/
To briefly describe each of these stated silos, TIFR Mumbai pages are one of the earliest sources of introductory content on the city, maps/ rudimentary information have been obtained from Karmayog and MCGM for those attuned to the workings of the site should have culled material as required. UDRI have maintained to be a physical repository of the city in the city. Via its portal a selection of its material is made available. YUVA Urban is a relatively new anticipatory location of city content. Mostly an outcome of the present climate of participatory urban planning, they would be deemed to hold and disseminate in various capacities Mumbai data and information. TimeOut Mumbai hold one of the most active cultural databases to constantly stream across the city’s avenues for fun.
All six are institutions with their respective mandates and idiosyncrasies towards processes of information dissemination on their portals. The objective in the work plan is to stage the various parameters under which these organisations produce city specific content. Rate at which material is produced and updated enables the creation of guidelines to observe the pages and systemically record the transcripts. These then are processed on the basis of the assembled template as constrained by the MediaWiki customisation format, or for that matter the possibilities it holds. The use of an archive of this nature is ideal to be tested against web footprint of agencies such as YUVA Urban who are, due to limitations, unable to adequately program a policy for dissemination of the content it holds and requires to be distributed as per its requirements of their ongoing projects. The question in place would be to _ can/ should the archive [mumbaiopendata.org] be a capacity building exercise that works with organisations towards hosting of significant volumes of house material to be simultaneously consumed and archived at the same time. Associated content that available then adds substance to a live repository in progress. Sum total of possibilities identified while transcribing stagnant content and facilitating space for live engagement formulates the framework/ method of content location on the archive. Only content in English will be looked for this instance.