Sidebar: Advice for Digital History Graduate Students
As a graduate student in public history with a professional interest in archival management, it was a privilege to manage the digitization of a select portion of the John R. Hickman Collection. Based on my two-month experience, I created guidelines for other graduate students in history who might find themselves engaged in similar initiatives. While these suggestions are based upon my specific work with audio digitization, they are applicable to other projects as well.
• Cultivate relationships with professionals outside the history department. Simply stated, without the expertise of archives, library science, information technology or audio technology plus helpful input from copyright law, the John R. Hickman Digital Collection project would not exist. History graduate students should look outside the traditional history realm for inspiration and support for digital initiatives.
• Be directly involved. Historians must actively participate in all facets of the project, even if other experts provide technical skills. From a practical perspective, the digital project must be consistent in terms of overall theme and messaging so it is imperative the historian coordinates the effort. These initiatives also serve as tremendous learning experiences where historians can soak up information necessary to more knowledgeably plan future digital initiatives.
• Find a champion. As a graduate student, it helps to cultivate the support of faculty or staff to further the project along. It was crucial for me to have the assistance of the American University head archivist to initially secure necessary permissions to move forward with this initiative and champion this project as needed while underway. Using her name to garner other assistance during the effort didn’t hurt either!
• Don’t hesitate to ask foolish questions, but do your homework. As much of the technology involved in the digitization effort was unfamiliar to me, I made mistakes or initially provided incorrect direction. I tried to rectify this by reading as much as I could. For instance, I brushed up on standards for digitizing audio to acquire a basic understanding of ideal formats and speeds for digitization. I still asked what might be considered silly questions of my technical experts, but having a small amount of knowledge was nevertheless helpful.
• Develop an expanded vocabulary. I rapidly acquired new terminology relevant to the technical processes of building a web site and digitizing audio and the archival management/library science processes of working with metadata. I incorporated this new vocabulary as quickly as possible since it made providing instructions or asking questions of experts working with me much easier.
• Be politely persistent and appropriately grateful. Engaging the participation of so many individuals was one of the biggest challenges and opportunities with this project. Historians must rely on other experts for assistance instead of conducting all the work themselves. As a graduate student, it is difficult and uncomfortable to clarify what seem to be basic technical issues, but often necessary to ensure the success of the endeavor. Frequently the individuals that you are working with also have limited time and many other priorities besides helping you. If you are brushed aside, be politely persistent. Also remember to thank these individuals for their time, skills, and assistance. Most people appreciate being recognized for their effort and generally are much more willing to assist when appropriately recognized.
• Budget wisely. As a technical novice and graduate student juggling other classes and projects, I learned to allow extra time for each phase of the project. When engaging in a digital endeavor, expect to encounter technical hurdles that you must determine how to troubleshoot, equipment problems that you need to resolve, and time to get up to speed on technology.
• Remember this is still a history project. Although historians must engage other disciplines to create a successful outcome, history should remain at the core of the initiative. At times, I wore several hats (archivist, audio tech, IT staffer, librarian) and needed to remind myself to keep the historian’s perspective top of mind. As the site’s chief purpose is to serve as a digital repository, I did not develop a particular historical argument. However, I inserted a historian’s perspective where possible. For instance, I was very conscious of the fact that the reels are cultural resources, representative of a particular time and place. Equally important, since this is a test project, I decided which reels should be digitized, choosing news clips discussing noteworthy events, such as President Roosevelt’s famous declaration of war speech from December 8, 1941. In addition, I though about the historian’s needs as a researcher, wanting the metadata to be presented clearly and coherently with minimal technical information about the audio/digitization process and ample background on the overall collection itself.