adj.combining elements of two different categories of media, usually paper and digital mediaWalters 1995, 481Technologically-hybrid preservation systems, being digital and microfilm-based in their configuration, will revolutionize preservation reformatting and access to reformatted materials. In the coming years, archivists will benefit from the published experiences of these projects. A preliminary conclusion seems to be that archives are likely to use hybrid systems to achieve the aims of both preservation and access.Schrock 1996, 212–213She said it was a “hard time for an archivist” and described current records practice as “hybrid.” The office uses CAD for its larger jobs and computer renderings as presentation drawings, while continuing to produce traditional drawings on trace and paper for small jobs and some design development. Copies are made by xerography on Mylar and paper, by the diazo process, by plotter, or by the laser printer. Records are kept on optical disk, tapes, and paper.Gilliland-Swetland 2002, 209Most record-keeping systems are a hybrid of electronic and paper records. This “mixed” environment must be taken into account when understanding the nature of any potential record generated by the system.Forstrom 2009, 461While the library has implemented policies and practices for managing electronic records on media of this sort, both changes in technology, personal computer use, and professional standards and practice, and acquisitions of mixed or hybrid archives are forcing us to re-evaluate and revise policy and practice.Conway and Landis 2011, 486An extended period of hybrid paper and electronic publication creates uncertainty about the degree of success that an organization can have in addressing these critical factors.Daines 2013, 97When working with hybrid (that is to say, mixed analog and digital) collections, archivists face challenges similar to those they confront when processing digital-only collections.Miller 2013, 531–532By digitizing the papers in a hybrid collection, the collection can be united electronically. The context between the paper and born-digital components in this digital union may not be fully integrated, but at least both parts will be fairly equally accessible through a single search interface.Wilsey et al. 2013, 1Like many late twentieth century archival collections, the STOP AIDS Project’s records are hybrid—containing textual, audiovisual, photographic, born-digital, and graphic materials.Shein 2014, 1–2The paper discusses some of the challenges encountered, decisions made, and workflows developed by archival staff while handling this hybrid collection of audiovisual recordings, born-digital mixed-media files, and printed transcripts.Farley and Willey 2015, 458In an ever-evolving quest to engage the public with archival collections and attract a wider patron base, repositories have had to reinvent themselves into hybrid institutions containing born-digital and digitized versions of analog collections.Gelfand 2015, 12For instance, earlier in 2015, as part of an accession from an institute that was terminating its existence, the archive received a number of boxes of analog records, a few gigabytes of data, and a specific request to archive its website. . . . These types of hybrid collections are only going to become more frequent in the future, and in order to succeed in their profession, archivists will need to become more involved in web archiving.
Notes
The definition of hybrid used generally in English is “composed of two or more heterogenous elements,” and the definition most common in the archival literature neatly fits within it. However, archivists use this term almost exclusively in the sense related to hybrid collections of records. In recent decades, this use is almost entirely confined to the meaning “having both digital and paper elements,” but in the past the usage was more commonly used to describe digital and micrographic access systems.
