Post Three
First of all, did anyone else find themselves a little bit confused by this chapter? I found my eyes glazing over with all the references to GML, TEI, GIF, TIFF, etc. I understand the basic arguments and discussions about digitization. Clearly, there are benefits and drawbacks when historians are addressing this topic. I get that there are multiple methods of turning analog historical records into digital historical records. But the detailed information about “Marking Up” the text or using a scanner vs. “the process known as OCR” really confuses me. I’m hoping that we can really go over the terminology and the process of digitization in class. I think I may understand all of this better if it is explained to me (and maybe demonstrated), rather than trying to understand based just on the reading.
I was intrigued by the first section of this chapter, which discussed the costs and benefits of digitizing the past. I definitely appreciate the advantages of placing documents and materials online. They are easier to locate and search, a benefit I certainly enjoy as a graduate student. Additionally, they are much more accessible to a larger group of people and often include documents which are too fragile to handle in any other circumstance. Yet there is still no replacement for visiting a library, or archive, and actually handling the material. It’s all part of the “experience”. While I don’t advocate wasting unnecessary time, the historian in me really enjoys looking at actual documents. I think this is true of the general public in some ways as well. People visit historic homes because there is something about being in the presence of original objects. It transports you, in some sort of abstract way. This same benefit is lost when original documents and materials are placed only in the digital form. Although searching through digitization is much easier, is it worth the loss?
It’s interesting that even digitization is connected to the current political atmosphere. The idea of outsourcing digitization projects seems like a pretty harmless decision. I didn’t realize that even this work is often sent overseas to China or India, where the labor is cheap because the workers are paid next to nothing. It’s funny; I would expect my computer support guy to be working in India these days…but I would never think that digitizing the documents for a historical website would be sent there too.
February 6th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
Your comment about the importance of “physical history” for lack of a better term speaks to one of my primary concerns about digitization. Not to suggest that I don’t think documents and other historical materials shouldn’t be digitized, but that some aspect of the experience may be lost when researching online instead of in archives. But, I do appreciate the convenience of digital resources and microform sources don’t have much tangible history either…
February 7th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
I dunno, I am not so concerned about the physicality of sources, unless of course they can actually tell us something. If there’s handwriting in the margins, say, I’d go with a scan, but otherwise I don’t think there’s much provenance to texts, at least not of serious significance. I wonder if this debate was had with the introduction of microfilm…
Photos might be another matter, however. I did pause during the discussion of whether or not to correct yellowed photos. Does it matter to the historical usefulness if we erase the photo’s indications of its age? Hm, actually I suppose that that applies to texts too. But for some reason I am inclined to say yes for photos but no for texts…
February 7th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Now that’s an interesting comment that I didn’t think about. Part of the importance of the photos is that they are old…marks of age, creases, thumbprints etc are signs of use and physicality.
I agree with trying to make the more accessible, but i’m not sure about the correctiveness of digitalization.