Valerie’s Weblog

Normally I heartily agree with most things Roy Rosenzweig writes. I find that in “Scarcity or Abundance?,” I have one of my first contentions. It is in some ways minor, but before I analyze the readings further I can not help but let it be known. Rosenzweig indicates that librarians and archivists have been interested in preserving digital data for years, whereas historians are just learning of its value. In this instance I want to state that I strongly think that archivists, and some librarians as well, have roles as historians. Archiving is the field I intend to use my Public History degree in, and I feel that archiving and history overlap in a number of ways. In this sense, for some time historians have been pushing for the preservation of digital data, however they are apparently not seen as historians. This is another one of the areas in which inter-disciplinary studies and communication are important and very much need. /rant of this entry.

The preservation of digital documents appears to follow in much of the same pattern that the preservation of paper documents has and still does. As always in historical preservation there are those who are of the mindset that every document is important and must be kept in order to provide an accurate picture of an event or lifestyle. A good archivist or records manager knows how to cull things and keep those that are of the most importance or give a future researcher enough information to draw conclusions. Of course all historians wait for the “smoking gun” document; that one letter that takes all historical theories and blows them out of the water. We always curse those that burned or culled these, most likely, non existent items.

Another very important concern is that of authenticity. Of course with digital documents it is difficult to tell who the editor is, or if someone has changed them between their creation and the time that they are in the hands or on the computer of the historian. But in many ways this problem has existed before as well. Of course if one recognizes the handwriting of the author of the papers it makes it easier to authenticate a document, but how can one tell with print material what is original and what the editor fixed or changed? One’s hope can be to understand the author’s writing style after having read many of their other works, for example I know an email or memo is written by a certain co-worker when it is signed with “cheers”, something that is distinct to them.

As always, the biggest problem in preservation of digital material goes back to legal and copyright issues. It is difficult to tell who owns what intellectual property. My emails and my blogs belong to who? And what permission should a library have to get before they are able to use them? I must say I’m glad that I do not have to determine the legal entanglements that go along with the issue.

Digital preservation has to make a number of strides in convincing people that it is not only possible, but important as well. Often times on a tour with school children we equate the emails they write with letters from long ago. We have to make people understand that this is how we will get information in the future. Maybe we should all be more conscious of our texting speak and forwards of dirty jokes or the future historians will think we’re a bawdy bunch who can’t spell.

Oral history has always been the bane of my historical existence. I find them cumbersome and difficult; simply put, not my cup of tea. But what makes oral histories truly interesting is the modernity and in the moment feel that they have. This begs the question of what is history and what is research?

There should be no expiration or starting date on history. History does not start after 30, 50, 100 years, history can in some part, be in the present. For events like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, historians have the chance to get stories and artifacts early, before stories are forgotten or items lost. These are opportunities that should not be lost. Historians often lament the lack of evidence from the “common man” who is unable to write or get their name into the archives; oral histories are the opportunity to pull the story from the common man and bring it to the world.

While it may cause hassle and be a lot of red tape in order to pass the Institutional Review Board standards that are applied when to research subjects. It is interesting that historians do not view the subjects in the past as research subjects. Many archives have stipulations on usage of documents because the author is either still alive, recently deceased, or left information that might impact the family in the present. Historians are often eager to find documents that prove a thesis or revolutionize a field, but at what expense to the memory of the person in the past. If we care for those that we review in the present, shouldn’t we, especially after spending so much time reading someone’s paper, treat them with the same trepidation about embarrassment?

In the future it would behoove historians to think about the concept of privacy, especially when it becomes an integral part of their research methods and subjects.

I thought I would use my post on Building an Audience to share a blog I visit frequently and believe does an excellent job of identifying its audience and catering to their needs. A coworker writes a blog entitled “Historic Buildings of Connecticut.” Aside from being an interesting read and an example of a great history blog it fills a niche that seems to be lacking in the Hartford area.

Pertaining more to the reading, it is frightening to imagine oneself as a marketer, and even more so a digital marketer. Public historians are required to have unique skill sets that will include such things. Even if not working in marketing directly it is important to understand how others perceive the historic offerings that are produced. Most historians are probably not aware that when they produce a web page it may not be one of the first sites to come up in a search engine because it does not use the term searched as frequently as a site that is not reputable. This is not to say that historians should be forced to write the same phrase over and over in order to appear at the top of the search list, but they should know why certain sites do make the top.

On of the other problems that museums in general have, and not just their websites, is return traffic. Often times a visitor might think that because they have been to the museum once they have seen or experienced all that there is to do. The same trap happens for websites. A museum should facilitate discussion with its audience as should a good website. Cohen and Rosenzweig suggest methods such as guest books and discussion boards. Both allow for the emulation of the conversation that is desired in museum environments. One other very important element however is the idea that there is a constant change in the museum and website. Repeat visitors want the same atmosphere and enjoyable experience they had the first time, but it is imperative that the information change so they feel they are constantly learning and growing.

The concept of social tagging seems to frighten a number of people, scholars and us lay folk alike. I think the root of the problem is in the misunderstanding of the wording. Social; it sounds unprofessional and is associated with sites like My Space often looked upon as youthful time wasters or just plain dangerous. Tagging; perhaps for those older it doesn’t have the graffiti-esque meaning it does for the young, but at the same time it doesn’t sound as official and concrete as cataloging.

Museum and Library professionals cataloging objects will not disappear. The benefits of systems like MARC are numerous and proven. What social tagging can do however, is help those who do not know how to utilize traditional cataloging methods find what they are looking for. Susan Chun’s article “Steve.museum: An Ongoing Experiment in Social Tagging, Folksonomy, and Museums” gives an idea of how social tagging allows visitors to show how they interpret and experience items. With the example of Diana and the Stag, a German made silver statue of the Goddess Diana. While an art catalog may tag the statue by maker, school, or medium, viewers had other ideas. Finding a statue of Diana when that is the goal is easy if the name is in the title. If the viewer is looking at statues that connote movement though the social tags like “action, jumping, leaping, or rearing” would be more helpful. Not everyone has the same level of education to understand aspects of the traditional cataloging that “professionals” consider important but mean almost nothing to someone doing a project.

If the real objection to social tagging comes from the fact that it is not done by professionals and could be wrong, it is imperative to assure museums that social tagging does not replace traditional systems. Allowing others to tag items increases the chance that someone will locate and look at that object. For those museums that choose to utilize social tagging benefits will occur. A sense of community and shared authority are something that can be had while still allowing for professionalism within the organization.

Digitization

In theory digitization sounds good. It can solve all our historical problems. Space, money, staff, access; nothing could possibly go wrong! Because I so often enjoy being contrary, I have to state I am not fully on board with total digitization. Cohen and Rosenzweig raise only a few of the issues with the process that I wish to address.

1. Real life v. a Computer: The authors mention the example of a Monet painting. Yes the viewer is able to see the colors that the painter uses, however it is just not the same. Not only will there be colors the computer can not display, but the beauty of the painting lies in the strokes themselves and they emotion they inspire in the viewer. This works the same way with documents. Being able to see the writing, the drawing, and even the amount of pressure placed on the paper tells a scholar about the use and emotion put into something.

2. $Money$: Digitization takes staff. For many institutions though storage is getting cheaper, the labor involved in digitizing does not exist. New staff needs to be hired to work on specific projects. In smaller museums, even with grants, it is difficult to devote the time and money to such an encompassing project.

3. Training: The staff who has to be paid also has to be knowledgable. For most museums the staff already wears multiple hats. To increase their duties, especially in a skill area they do not have, may in fact put the project in jeopardy. While this type of labor can be outsourced, that increases the cost in many cases, and makes the database of documents relatively unfamiliar to the staff.

4. Heightened Expectations: While it is nice to have so much information at one’s fingertips, and I myself have used digitized documents, it does create heightened expectations among researchers. For those museums or archives that do not have documents digitized grumbling is sure to occur.

5. The Librarian is Your Best Friend: For many scholars, in their mind at least, they know the most about their topic. One of the most untapped resources is librarians and archivists who have spent years working with a collection or topic and have superior knowledge in that area. It behooves scholars to acquaint themselves with these figures who have a common interest and knowledge in that topic area.

I am  not entirely against digitization, however it is not the ultimate solution. A combination of digitization and hard copies need to be utilized to create the optimal research experience. Just as historians need to study inter-disciplinary measures, they need to employ inter-disciplinary research skills.

I know I apologized for my lateness last week, however my father has been sick and I have been home for sometime now. It’s been difficult to do much let alone blog.

I did want to make a comment on the idea of historians knowning aspects of web design. As anyone who has worked as a historian knows, many hats must be worn. Organizations are often understaffed and even worse sometimes the only staff is underqualified. That leaves some duties, like webpage design to those with enough initiative to tackle the problem. If historians refuse to learn what aesthetically makes sense on the web they lose out on the ability to present their best public face. Webpages are one of the first ways that the public is now introduced to an organization or historical project.

Historians do not need to be programmers, but they need to understand the way things work. History is connected with curiosity. It surprises me that more historians do not have an interest in technology and design. The only way that historians will grow is if they are inter-disciplinary and receptive to other areas and change.

Again, apologizes for the cold, but I did want to get a word in about last week’s case studies.

The particular wiki I chose was the Thomas Jefferson Wiki. While I thought the information was cited incredibly well, and was very helpful in terms of producing primary sources to look at, I was not impressed with the article quality. There simply were not many articles. In many cases it seemed as though primary sources were put on the page with no exposition as to why they were important or what they told me about Thomas Jefferson. I did enjoy my foray into his dental health however.

In general I found most of the wikis disappointing. Wikimapia was a less interesting version of Google Earth, where the stubs on areas were sometimes wrong or inane. Citizendium was equally disappointing. Many of the articles were more like “stubs” and didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about the subject. Perhaps I have a distaste for wikis in general. I will say I’m not suspicious of the technology, truth be told, I don’t like Encyclopedias in any form.

My apologies to anyone who waited with baited breath for my blog this week. I have been overcome wtih a cold and the mere thought of going near a computer and reading anything made my head hurt.

I sat down with my reading and found “Cyberinfrastructure” waiting for me. I thought about taking my tissues and blanket and going back to bed. So much for the headache. I looked at who the American Council for Learned Studies’ report was for and thought I wouldn’t have to understand it too deeply, I wasn’t one of the targeted audiences; until I reached the last target. Drat, the public history component. I summed up my nerve and dove head first into Cyberinfrastructre. I came to find that it is simply a large word for what we are already learning and what many museums are currently trying to implement.

The report includes the important fact that as technology advances, it behooves societies to utilize it not just for scientific or purely technological means, but to contribute to the knowledge of other disciplines, in this particular case, the humanities. It becomes so difficult to connect technology and history in many people’s minds. They at first seem mutually exclusive, when in fact they are so intrinsically tied together. This mental block comes not just from the average person searching for history materials, but in many, and sometimes more dangerous, cases it comes from teh top level of scholarship in the field.

The report points out the need for increasing collaboration between the disciplines to make these efforts possible. Didn’t I become an archivist with the explicit goal of avoiding all human contact? No, not personally, but I can swear some people did. This is one of the most crucial areas of the report. It will also take much convincing in terms of letting go of the old ways that we are used to.

This line of thought still exists in the realm of access. In the grand tradition of many libraries and archives, the patron must wait (and wait) for the pull of the documents to occur; that is, if said documents are available, deemed sturdy enough to be used, or the patron was permission to use them. The same situation occurs with databases that have been put online. Most are subscription services, some costing a lot of money, and within those some documents that have been scanned, have certainly not been done well. There is also, as always, the issue of copyrights. This makes most of the materials older materials that are not currently under copyright. This area of the cyberinfrastructure in relation to history is one that needs to change drastically.

The most pressing problem with the cyberinfrastructure, however, is funding. Advocates of cyberinfrastructure will find the consoling arms of other areas of history wide open for them. Funding is always a problem. Unfortunately with a project of this magnitude it is inevitable that funding will be cut, or something better comes up half way through the project leaving its current incarnation seemingly woefully inept.

To sum it all up, to create the Utopian cyberinfrastructure we will need: acceptance of new technology, increased access, collaboration, and large funds. Perhaps in a perfect world American Council for Learned Societies. Or perhaps my lack of optimism stems from the cold.

History as an open source! It sounds like a dangerous proposition to most. Wasn’t I forced to attend numerous years of school, get advanced degrees, and suffer through historiography to have the privilege of being able to interpret history? Historians, in my opinion, tend to be very possessive and protective of their specialty, and with good reason. When one studies a subject so heavily it becomes a part of them. The natural tendency is when criticized or even gently corrected is to publish an article refuting the other side. As historians, and especially public historians, understanding idea of open source history is vital.

After spending many years in school to most of us, the authority of any subject is the person with the most prestigious PhD and the thickest book. To most others who do not make a living with the subject, history is more malleable and more personal.

To many minds, Wikipedia is a dangerous thing. Roy Rosenzweig mentions many articles on history through Wikipedia that leave out important elements or are factually incorrect. What is more important however, is that Rosenzweig points out that the problem lies in the fact that it is difficult to write collaboratively. Now that a source like Wikipedia has been introduced, it will most likely expand and not stop. What historians CAN do about Wikipedia is to learn to peer review these open source history models, just as we peer reviewed journals.

The case study I chose to look at for Week 3 was America History and LIfe. After seeing the other sites that were case studies, my opinion of the site has since been lowered.

The site itself has a good idea. It allows access to the LoC collections at any point for anyone (with internet access). What it lacks however, is any design aesthetic or ease of use. Compared to the simplicity of a site like Valley of the Shadow, America History and Life seems frustrating. To view a document it takes numerous links to find what you are looking for.  When getting the documents to read, two problems occur. You need to view the high resolution pictures to be able to make out most of the words, which just like the Thebian Mapping Project would require a high speed connection, and if one is not familiar with Early American handwriting it can be difficult to read. It does not always offer transcriptions.

Despite its flaws, the America History and Life site provides a good introduction to primary sources. Its most useful incarnation would be as a teaching tool. Because the documents that have been scanned are generally the ones which the LoC considered the most trafficked or wanted, the documents are not representative of the whole LoC collection. This would impede research online, forcing the patron to still research the old fashioned way.