collecting reactions
I am working on a research project about Chinatown in Washington, DC. There has not been a whole lot written about its history, so I want to use all available sources to create a full picture of its past. I have many images from the 1980s on, but only one from the first half of the 20th century. I would love to use a website as a collecting tool for this project, but after reading the chapter about collecting online in Digital History and discussing these ideas in class, I am not sure that this would be a viable option for me. I would really want to reach an older audience, who might not even use the internet, let alone have the capability to provide me with digitized versions of old photographs of the area. I also realized the full extent of the work required to advertise a collecting site. I wonder how long it would take to get real, valuable reactions to my questions and requests. I am thinking it would be longer than the time I have to research and write this paper. I also do not know if I am ready to try to judge the validity of any responses I might get. The whole process is much more time consuming than I would have previously thought.
February 6th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
This might be worthless, but it might not. You should be the judge of that. Anyway, maybe you could build a site that solicits people’s ideas of what Chinatown *is* or *should be* and then use those ideas to shape your argument about how DC’s Chinatown is/is not “authentic” and to discuss the role that popular consensus can play in identity? Or not. My brain stopped working a while ago.
Oh, and I put the Dower book in my bag. I need to keep the Grandin and Gould books, but they might be worth looking at. Let me know if you want the titles.
February 7th, 2006 at 11:41 am
I think Sarah is right. I had similar apprehensions in regard to doing a digital collection site; however it may not be as difficult as it seems. An I think the benefits for both of us woul be worth the anxiety over receiving false postings or surveys. Particularly if you are able to get a good sense of peoples views on what does or does not constitute an area being a Chinatown.
February 7th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Another thing might be what people thought of moving Chinatown from its original spot to where it is now.
February 7th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Another thing to bear in mind is that collecting isn’t an all-or-nothing enterprise - you might consider, for example, putting up some of your photos and then asking a general question about each. In other words, make the focus of the site the primary documents and allow visitors to layer their own knowledge over them, as opposed to making the focus the recollections themselves…
December 8th, 2006 at 1:04 am
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