The Virtual Past

The best way to describe this post is that it is full of metaphor…

Metaphor 1: I have this memory from elementary school. A group of us second graders (or was it third grade) are seated in the library watching a video series on the Dewey Decimal system [you know, the organizational schema for most library systems]. It is not just any video—rather its an adventure, a grueling, blood and guts story about an alien invasion and a book-mobile which is trying to find some way to save the last remnants of human information before they all get wiped out. (Don’t worry, its very fake, and fairly cheesy). Amidst this fighting, we students learned about the simplistic design of the Dewey Decimal system, and as I look back, the ideas behind information preservation. To my knowledge, while they did not broach the topic of digitalization, the tenants appeared to be similar in design.

I’m not sure why this story popped into my head as I read the materials for this week. A combination of articles on organization and archives this material detailed out many of the issues that we have been discussing as subsidiary to digitalization, history and technology. The narrative on the Dewey Decimal system mimics need for clarity in the metadata (organizational data) attached to the digital archives i.e. one that is intuitive or easily understood by those in the future. That being said, the material also made me think about my own spatial and sense of organization—and how that might reflect into any digital and written projects that I design.

Enter Metaphor 2: In my room there’s a very specific organizational structure to my book collection. Due to spatial considerations, many of the books that I own—but do not read often (i.e. Tom Clancy, old textbooks) are in the basement. In my room are the ones more recently used. This is how they are organized:

1. Hardcovers and Magazines on the tiny shelf.
2. On the big book shelf the order is based on subject matter—so all my paperbacks dealing with a particular space-opera on the top, followed by textbooks and library books relating to current classes, then all my other “leisure reading books” which includes Harry Potter, Homer, Tolkien, Jane Austin and Danny Wallace (a British Author who is hilarious!). The bottom shelf includes reference books—anything that I may need to look at in a moments notice from undergraduate classes.
3. In the corner of my room are three piles of 30 books each—which represent all my texts from the last three semesters…these books are in transition. I may or may not look at them often, but their physical presence allows me some comfort to know that I can search through them without having to move very far.

I’m sure you’re asking the following question: Why is she telling us all this? Well…like the science fiction library adventure, the organization of an archive is clearly connected to the ability of a variety of users to retrieve the data at minimal stress. In both the Dewey Decimal system and my own schema spatial configuration and document form are important.

Metaphor 3: Take a snowflake for example (it snowed this weekend if you didn’t notice). Repeating patterns, that form a very intricate and very beautiful crystal that when dropping en-masse from moisture ridden clouds at specific conditions looks like a puffy even layer of cold cotton. How do you find data about the individual snowflake when it is immersed in the masses? Through the search function which gives users a way to wade through the materials in a productive manner. The three websites we examined each gave a way to increase productivity—not necessarily dealing with finding data, but to daily life. I think the one I appreciated the most was LifeHacker–“Don’t live to geek, geek to live.” Lifehacker talked about taking caffeine naps—coffee followed by a nap chaser…the perfect stimulant to get you through the day….(and maybe ruin your health along the way?) Also having recently been indoctrinated in the wonderful world of Endnote, CiteULike added to that wonder and awe of tools to make a researchers life easier.

My questions for organization are connected to the discussion of archives where issues of organization and preservation of digital material seem to be intimately connected to finding an industry standard. While documentation (through html comments, readme files etc) and backing up seem to be a way to preserve information, it really depends on constant vigilance by the archivist.

Also…I’m not so sure I agree with Margaret Hedstrom who says there is a contradiction between the ideals of mass storage and long term preservation…..to some extent mass storage allows for preservation of more archives. So once again I guess it depends on what our definition of preservation is. In once sense, mass storage keeps information in trust, but it’s the quality of preservation that is threatened—and the quality of preservation is dependant (in the digital world) on things like backups on a variety of media.

I would have to admit that I spent a lot of time looking at the archives on Streetprint Engine. American Decadence, Scrawl, and Urban Record all are examples of how successful digital archives can be in allowing the inaccessible to be accessible. I did have a few questions in conjunction with Scrawl. How does archiving graffiti change the meaning of the art when its taken out of the urban context? Does it change the meaning?

Also, although the deadline has passed—I would love it if you would fill out my survey if you have not yet.

Alright,

I had trouble getting to a lab (travel issues, meetings etc all conspired to get in my way). Instead what i’m going to put up are some images from my trip to London as well as one image that I manipulated for an old website that I had….

This first image is of the London Underground tube alert map not long after the second set of bombings this past summer. When I initially brought it on my computer the image was a little blurry, so using Photoshop at a friends place I sharpened it a little. The image file is actually quite large, so in posting it, I also cut the size down from roughly 1000×1500 to 486×648.

This second image is one that I thought was cool, because of the meaning behind the image. Its from a Fourth of July night cruise I took with my flatmates on the Thames. The interesting about it was that we were on a boat flying a flag from Austrailia.

Finally, this is an image that I was messing with from one of my first websites. Obviously the basis was the London Underground Tube map–but in place of the central blue bar, I had the blade of a red lightsaber…. This image however was constructed in Microsoft Paint, so isn’t quite as clear as I would like it to be.

…and a very fascinating one at that. This week we had to read a chapter on Digitalization from our Digital History text. As usual though I’m going to interrupt this stream of consciousness world to entreat my fellow classmates to please fill out the online survey regarding the department website. (See below posts)

All of my thoughts coalesce around one topic. Outsourcing….who would have thought that this topic that is such a major contention in the political arena for businesses also has penetrated the world of digitalization. Crazy!

Seriously though, the reading for this week made me think about how different the technology is for text, image, video, and audio digitalization. Learning what TIFF, GIF, and JPEG actually stood for was good, but the amount of shifting that is constantly occurring in the realm of technology constantly fascinates me. We started this class talking about how just ten years ago the internet, for all intents and purposes, was not a tool for the public. Now though through digitalization—accessibility has jumped through the roof….

This leaves me to ponder a historical conundrum, which is not only alluded to in the text but also is intimately connected to the ethical issues of historical practice. Who is doing the interpretation? Is it the historian who chooses the pieces to be archived? The archivist who creates the finding aid? The scanner, who handles the document and/either depending on the level of funding, types up the text into a text file, or makes a photographic copy of the physical document? Also the discussion of machine error when using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software…how does that reflect in the already interpretive laden world of historical analysis?

I have no answers….but perhaps I would say that technology and digitalization presents itself as merely another layer in a continuous redefinition of the historical field. The fundamentals may remain the same, but the tools for practices continuously evolve…and demand newer ethical and creative rules.
************

As for Collecting and Searching….I plan on using much of the information from the previous class in my current research project. That being said—until recently I had plans to co-develop a website with Linda (another student in the class) that linked public history to various audiences. I believe we are rethinking the outline of the project but can see and recognize the different levels of importance that the variety of techniques practiced may have on the project for this class. I do like the idea of collecting stories. Self-narrations make the past real, and tangible— and when produced in conjunction with multiple groups of people reveal just how meaningful the past can be.

The material from class gave me some tips i.e. key words, and searching tools that I can use for my research seminar paper on natural monuments. Also it was interesting to learn about D-spaces—something which I can see having enormous potential in both an academic and non-academic sense.

Directly connecting to the conversation above—the ideas of trust, validity of methodology and practice are things that effect many different fields—even outside the digital world. For example on this morning’s CBS show Sunday Morning a piece was done on the J. Paul Getty Museum’s difficulty (and mayhaps the Met and MFA in Boston) regarding the acquisition and collecting of looted artifacts from Italy and other areas.

Here’s the text about the piece off of Sunday Morning’s Website.:

BRUSH WITH THE LAW
Anthony Mason explores the new Getty Villa that’s just opened in Los Angeles. And we get to find out just why the Italian government is looking so intensely at several American museums. Is that looted artwork Americans are seeing in their museums? We look into the case of the Getty’s former curator of antiquities, Marion True, who is now on trial in Rome for allegedly trafficking in looted artwork. We will also talk with Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about that museum’s negotiations to return some of its treasures to the Italian government.

I guess to sum up my thoughts in a single statement?

It’s a changing world—but the transformation is in the handling—not the content

Don’t forget to fill out the survey in the previous post…

I initially started this post by talking about the reading, but once I began going through the websites I found myself being sucked into the narratives… whether I was reading about 9/11 or home pregnancy tests. I think that these websites are an interesting testimonial to the power of oral history. To some extent though these sites are all about making and preserving history—very significantly from the ground up. Each of these sites allow for the ordinary person to “let their voice be heard” in a very democratic sense…. I found myself particularly fascinated by the histories of women regarding the pregnancy test—the candid answers, and the descriptions of those who used it in early 1980’s to those who use the tests recently were particularly telling….and provided an incredible wealth of information over a large swath of time.

I also liked Josh’s website on the Video rental oral histories. Streamlined, and very easy to navigate it also asserted the strength of a well chosen topic which seems to have garnered a measure of attention. I know some of the non-chain rental agencies still exist in my area (No. VA) and allow for rentals at a fraction of the cost.

In terms of the 9/11 website, I think what was the most interesting was the speed at which the LOC and various university students understood the magnitude of what occurred—and the quick response to saving the pages of the New York Times etc.

Perhaps the most questions I had regarding this weeks topic dealt with the linkage between digital archives as preservation and digital archives as things that need to be preserved. On the former designation, digital archives are an important tool in preserving stories and e-mails—like we talked about last class this web based genre is actually creating and expanding its community through a variety of marketing tools that spread the word. As a thing that needs to be preserved, it has to do with the challenge historians face as we move further and further away from the paper trail. When you hit delete—the message is gone forever—a daunting prospect for those who may seek to reconstruct our past 25-50+ years from now. To some extent though, and Rosenzweig and Cohen’s chapter touches on this—is that we construct these archives in a conscious manner—we define the subject manner and design the interface that our community navigates.

Last semester in Visual and Material Culture we learned about the counter-archive. A Counter-Archive is a group of images, data and documents collected with the primary goal of moving against a normative archive—one which represents a dominant historical narrative. Specifically the book we read, Photography on the Color Line by Shawn Michelle Smith, looked at the collection put together for the Paris World Fair by W.E.B. Dubois (which showed successful African Americans through images and texts) as a means of countering the dominant stereotypes of African Americans. This week we looked at the process in which an archive is created—in the land of www. The multiple definitions of archives, and new methodologies of collecting and preserving the past opens new necessary avenues which redefine our responsibilities as historians in an ever changing age.

On another note…I wanted to say a word or two on some other pieces of information from Digital History: the idea of providing “magnet” content to get individuals to visit, and the principle of trust. While their advice on how to set up a collection site, these two areas seem to be, perhaps, the most important areas. They address the questions–how do we get people here, and once they come, how do we get them to stay–and keep coming back. Sound familiar? Its very much like discussions that museums–and for what its worth stores and other places of business– have been having for years (museums more recently) attracting their particular “consumer.” True with these archives no one is buying anything, but there is some production going on–production that for those giving the narratives is feeding into a larger product of which we (or the site managers) are assembling. What is that larger product? And In terms of Public History what does that mean to the public–or any other audience?

Anyway…I did a little hopping around and found myself linking to a bunch of really cool blogs. It started out from reading the William Turkel piece on Spidering and Scraping….which was interesting (if not for the discussion of comprehensives and how to study for them) because of the parallels made regarding how to teach students to navigate the internet–as it once was about kids needing to learn to read a book.

After reading the essay, I clicked on some of the blogs listed on the left part of the screen…and somehow ended up at this list: AHA History Blog Awards
Check some of the blogs out—they’re really fascinating to read.

See you next week….(and don’t forget to fill out the survey).

As you all know, I am one of the Graduate Students working to redesign the department website this semester. As part of the process Rob and I have developed a survey that we would like a core group of graduate (and undegraduate) students to fill out–this is so we get some kind of idea of what people actually use the website for.I’m attaching the word file…if you could go ahead and e-mail (or just copy and past your answers into a comment) that would be great. Also we are sending the same form out over H-Grad this week, so you don’t have to fill it out twice if you already do it here.

Thanks!

In reading for class this coming week, I realized (and Josh had mentioned this to me earlier) that CHNM has a site survey tool….so click here and fill it out.

*****

(First, sorry this is late guys—we’ll blame it on the 48 hour post-comp bug.)

So…moving on…

It is of constant fascination to me just how many people instantly equate history and technology as incompatable….but as the articles for this week indicates history and technology have walked arm in arm for a long time.

In thinking about the relationship between history and the internet I have a few questions to discuss.

First is this idea of a community and how the internet and technology develop and expand particularly the historical community. What comes to mind instantly (and is discussed somewhat in Roy Rozenswieg’s chapters) are the immense arrays of listserve hosted by H-Net. One of the things I often find wanting in certain public arenas is the lack of debate allowed between differing points of view.To some extent H-net’s forums allow historians from all across the world to come together and discuss projects, ask questions, and float new ideas—sometimes becoming more then merely an online discussion. Take the idea of the “New New Political History” that (and some of us heard about this in Colloq I last semester) started out on H-SHEAR the listserve for the Early American Republic. It’s hypothesis argues that the typcial politcal history is being subsumed by a new new political history that looks at political culture and cultural politics…these historians look at things like election day parades, and fetes (I’m thinking of David Walstreicher’s book on Nationalism in the Early Republic) and how these contributed to framing this new nation. (For reference, the new politcal history that came before transformed a generation of history examining big men to looking at political parties and voter statistics). Well, this discussion on H-SHEAR pushed the historians on the list into a wider discussion that resulted in papers and later a book discussing the new trend, and whether it is actually a new trend at all.

Anyway, My point is that online communities allow historians that are seperated by geographical limitations to easily transfer ideas to a large group of collegues without the need of a physical face-to face conference.

Secondly, in the public history realm, as is exhibited by the websites that we visited there is growing attention to the presentation of history in exhibitions and other designs. There is something to be said about the impermanence of exhibitions that go up for a variable time period from two weeks, a few months, to a few years. While some museums like the National Museum of American History have exhibitions that go up for decades sometimes the only way that visitors from far away are able to experience them is through the internet. This is the interesting thing about the web—in that it appears more permenant than a phsyical exhibition with a limited time span, but at the same time it is more transcendent and more ephemeral then seeing and almost touching physical objects. Exhbitions on the web provide an outlet of preservation that would not have existed prior to the advent of the internet, and also allows older sites to be updated and revised faster than a physical exhbition. For example (and sorry to use the National Museum of American History again) check out

“A More Perfect Union”

http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/experience/index.html

“Within these Walls”

http://americanhistory.si.edu/house/

So my questions for you are—how much content is too much content? Do we really think visitors or historians actually pay attention to these larger discussions or actually take the time to peruse the whole website? What are the advantages/disadvantages to having websites that are easily editable? And also—and I speak of Wikipedia in particular—how confident are we that that sort of communal fact construction is entirely accurate? Do online communities like that have less authority than one hosted by a university or organization?

Let me know what you think

For those who might stumble upon this blog in error….it is for a graduate class I am taking at American University on Digital History. What does that mean? Read on…and maybe the responses and comments from my classmates may interest you in some way….

For everyone else….welome!