Preserving the Internet
Web Archiving
The article looks at efforts to preserve the contents of the Internet for future generations. Particular focus is given to the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) project, led by computer scientist Kaylev Leetaru, and to the not-for-profit digital library known as the Internet Archive. Topics include the alteration of online documents such as government press releases and the digitization of books and other museum and library collections.
Shein, Esther
Communications of the ACM
2016-01
Allen, Amber
Journal Article
Orlando Memory
Collective Memory
Designed by the Orange County Library System, this is an archive that seeks to preserve personal records relating to Orlando, creating a database for local history research. It relies on user-created content in the form of images, audio files, or videos to construct a sense of what life in Orlando has been like throughout its history.
Orange County Library System
Orange County Library System
Wolf, Casey
Website
How to Preserve Change: Activist Archives & Video Preservation.
Collective memory
In this podcast, Jefferson Bailey of the New York Library Council and Joshua Ranger of Audiovisual Preservation Solutions discuss ways in which archivists can preserve documentation of activism. They interview Grace Lile and Yvonne Ng, both of whom are archivists at the international non-profit organization WITNESS, which focuses on using video as a medium for human rights documentation and advocacy. Lile and Ng describe the archive at WITNESS, emphasizing that in human rights work, the safety and security of people have to be prioritized over access, as creators’ and interviewees’ lives may be in danger. Thus, human rights archiving requires close collaboration with creators and producers, and the appraisal process must entail a variety of considerations regarding safety. Lile and Ng therefore see the archive not so much as a place to store information on the past, but, in the context of activism specifically, as part of the process of creation.
Metropolitan New York Library Council and AudioVisual Preservation Solutions
1-1-2013
Moeller ,Laura
Podcast
The Future of the Past
Archives
In Part II of The Future of the Past, Alexander Stiille discusses cultural memory as it relates to the National Archive and the process of digitizing and converting nontextual material to a more stable format. Stille states that, at current staff levels, it would take 120 years to transfer nontextual material to more stable digital formats. Using this example, he thus elucidates a problem pinpointed by many scholars of digital archives: eventually, information abundance starts to feel overwhelming. Furthermore, with information glut comes questions of authority and vetting processes: who is creating and controlling cultural memories?
Stille, Alexander
Picador
2003
Sara Raffel
Book
ISBN-13: 978-0312420949
Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust
Museum
Curation
In <em>Preserving Memory</em>, Linenthal discusses the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. throughout all stages of its creation. He discussion the ownership of memory, whether political or cultural, and the political motivations behind the creation of the museum. Then, he continues to describe the design of the exhibits, explaining how archival materials were used and sometimes altered to create a particular mood. For example, photographs were not retouched, though the technology was available, because aged photographs come with greater authenticity. Ultimately, Linenthal's goal was to dissect the many layers of struggle and traumatic memory and determine how the people, ideals, and objects are best represented through curated exhibits.
Linenthal, Edward T.
Penguin Group
1997
Sara Raffel
Book
ISBN-13: 978-0140245493
Omeka and Digital Archives
Digital humanities
Webinars have a unique advantage over books or journal articles in that they are interactive and allow viewers to direct questions to the host. Although no longer an interactive webinar, in this one-hour video Jim McGrath gives an overview of Omeka, the open-source content management system developed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. McGrath explains the installation process, identifies user options (institutional vs. private server/FTP) and discusses customization options. Installing free plug-ins, such as the mapping tool Neatline, and using cloud-based applications, such as Dropbox, to migrate photographs and documents into the archive give the user flexibility in designing their archive.
McGrath also addresses topics including how to use Omeka as a teaching tool in the classroom and opening the archive to accept crowd-sourced material. In this case, their Boston Marathon archive allowed visitors to the website the opportunity to upload their own pictures and share memories of the 2013 bombing. The video stresses that the ability to provide this sort of collaboration is one of Omeka’s strong points, as well as its ease of use. Once the information is archived, McGrath explains, a standard vocabulary—in this case Dublin Core—is necessary to navigate the exhibits and allow Omeka to interact with other archives.
HASTAC Team
HASTAC Scholars Digital Collections Webinar with Jim McGrath
2015
Robert Clarke
Webinar
Catching Stories: A Practical Guide to Oral History
Personal archives
A good overview regarding the practical aspects of collecting oral histories. The authors state that anyone with the time, resources, and interest can take part in the recording of oral history. There are no age barriers or educational barriers when conducting interviews and the advancement in technology has made digital recorders and camcorders affordable and accessible. Community historians tend to engage in topics that they can relate to and have some bearing on their own lives and background. The authors also explore the challenges dealing with family history as well as the sensitivity needed when interviewing a subject for the first time. The authors' mission is to enable more people to practice history.
Deblasio, Debra M. Charles, F. Ganzert, et al..
Swallow Press, Athens. Ohio
2009
Robert Clarke
Book
ISBN:978-0-804-1117-74
Beyond the Encyclopedia: Collective Memories in
Wikipedia
Collective memory
Michela Ferron and Paolo Massa employ a quantitative study of Wikipedia as a digital archive in order to show how one can view memory as an active process. The authors begin with a discussion of Web 2.0 as public, private, and modifiable, but unable to be completely erased. They further assert that backups of the Internet, particularly in the case of Wikipedia, allowed them to conduct longitudinal studies about data. Ferron and Massa used an XML file to show the revision history of all pages of the English Wikipedia on September 16, 2010, arguing that a revision spike occurs near the anniversary of a traumatic event. They found that pages relating the September 11, 2001 attacks received an average of 10, 701 edits per day during the anniversary, and only 4,619 edits per day otherwise. Ferron and Massa compared this data to Wikipedia pages for non-traumatic events, like Woodstock and Apollo 11, which did not receive as much attention.
Ferron, Michela
Massa, Paolo
2013
Sara Raffel
Journal
Everyone Around You Has a Story the World Needs To Hear
Archives
This TEDtalk outlines Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps, argument for the construction of a digital archive that aims to capture the voices, and stories of all of humanity. He argues that by the interview itself becoming the central focus of the work of StoryCorps, instead of focusing on a figure in history, the StoryCorps project aimed to create transformational experiences for participants while collecting and archiving the stories and conversations of others in the Library of Congress. StoryCorps has grown to include well over 100,000 participants, constituting the largest collection of human voices every created. In response to receiving the TED prize he was asked to come up with a brief wish for humanity: “that you will help us take everything we’ve learned through StoryCorps and bring it to the world, so that anyone, anywhere can easily record a meaningful interview with another human being which will then be archived for history.
Isay, Dave
2015-03-20
Foley, Christopher
Video
Create Your Own Family Archive
Personal archives
"Our mission is simple — to help you capture, preserve, organize and enjoy your family's most valuable photos, papers, stories and mementos using archival best practices, methodologies and supplies. We know our advice and supplies are the best, because they're the same ones employed by professional archivists and museum experts from around the world."
Family Archives
FamilyArchives.com
2014
DeJesus, Angela M.
© Copyright FamilyArchives.com. All Rights Reserved.
Website