Speaker
Description
We are working on rescuing, digitizing and (hopefully) extracting data from the scientific archive collection belonging to the Magnetic Observatory of Tatuoca, at the Brazilian Amazon. This observatory goes back to 1932 as a temporary observation location, and since 1957, as a permanent observatory pertaining to the National Observatory authority from Brazil. The physical archive includes a special kind of documents called magnetograms, covering observations of Earth’s magnetic field registered between 1957 and 2007, when the Observatory began broadcasting data via web. In 2017, responding to the request of the Geophysics Institute at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), we, the Faculty of Archives and the Postgraduation of Information Science, took on the mission of rescuing this collection. Under the worst limitations of resources, we began this process dividing it into four phases: physical rescue and curation, digitization, data extraction applying artificial intelligence (an initiative carried under InterPARES research consortium), and the creation of a museum collection. Other than budget and know-how limitations, we have faced the coronavirus lockdown, equipment shortage, international barriers, institutional crisis, but also, we have learned so much regarding the reality of distant scientific archives and technological development applied to them.
