Week Six Digital History Post: The Future of Digital Archivism

What  is the future of digital archives? It is a necessary question, and one which is fitting for the final blog post. Over the past few weeks, I have commented on a number of aspects of the digitization movement within history. There are many facets of digitization, and obviously far more than I have been able to touch on. Two dominant themes have risen to the top through the discourse, and if we are to take anything away from all of the information presented, it is that one, preservation, and two, accessibility, are key.

Sadly, old tech doesn't age this well.

The discourse over preservation is dominated by the quandary of how to keep all of the information within digital collections accessible. Obsolescence and data loss are both very real dangers which must be contended with in order to make long term storage of digital historical resources viable. Obsolescence is tackled in a number of different ways. Information can be recopied (refreshed) periodically to preserve it. It can, and indeed must, be transferred (migrated) into every newer formats so that it can remain accessible. If that fails, historians must be at least familiar with the concept of emulation—the use of a virtual environment wherein information stored in older formats can be accessed using newer machines. And, of course, we must always, ALWAYS, remember to back up our information. Putting all of our proverbial eggs in one basket could easily lead to lots of broken eggs and nothing to eat for breakfast. If we are to derive any sort of benefit from the digital information that we are storing now, we ensure that it will survive into the future, and also employ measures to allow future archivists to use it.

Digital archives must learn to avoid the fate of so much hardware.

Sadly enough, some reputable sources define long term storage of digital information as being no more than half a decade. This is simply unacceptable. While the digital medium is infinitely more fragile and vulnerable to the vicissitudes of time, simply making excuses will do nothing to address the problem. This could easily lead to a “digital dark age”, or a time in the no-so-distant future when all of the information that we have collected so far is irreparably lost. Both the public and private sectors are aware of this fact, which is why we can see marked growth in the field of digital archivists. These men and women are professional information shepherds, charged with watching over the vast collections of digital information which have already been collected, and make sure that they survive into the next generation.

An image from the Polar Bear Collection website.

Alongside the battle to preserve digital archives, there is the continued efforts to make the information easier to access and use. At the head of these efforts are experiments such as the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collection, an online archive hosted by the University of Michigan. Employing all manner of user tools, such as bookmarking, comments, and link paths, the site attempted to generate greater user interest by making the information easily accessible. Their findings, while not always what was expected, yielded useful information which can be used by others who are striving towards the same ends. Efforts such as this are extremely important. If the information we are going to all the trouble to save is ignored and falls into disuse, then it is no better off than if it had simply been lost.

The digital age is still fairly young, and the lessons which must be learned to effectively harness the tools of this age are still being discovered. We must be quick studies if we are to keep from losing much of what we have gained so far.

The Davenport Stop...

Dr. Cebula asked me to post the copy for my Davenport stop.  It's nothing particularly fancy, but if it can help, then I am more than glad to share it with you.

The highlighted text is the points where I wanted to transition between my images.  Like I said, I had a video similar to what we've see from Cleveland Historical while I was putting this together.  Hopefully I'll have so time to set aside for making a video (sans imovie), and I'll be sure to let you know how that turns out.

(opening image)In 1912 construction began on one of the most celebrated hotels in the West. Constructed from the same red brick which can be seen in so much of Spokane's architecture, the Davenport Hotel was far from ordinary. The brainchild of restauranteur/entrepreneur Louis Davenport and renowned architect Kirkland Cutter, the Davenport hotel impressed visitors with the best in class and atmosphere that the Inland Empire had to offer.

Louis Davenport, so the story goes, arrived in 1889, the same year as the great Spokane fire. In the wake of the blaze, Davenport made a living helping remove rubble and debris, and in the process was able to set aside enough money to open up a small restaurant in a tent. Davenport's business quickly grew and just four years after the fire he moved into a new location, which stood at the eastern-most end of the block, which would become his acclaimed Italian Gardens restaurant.

After a trip down the railroad to Chicago in 1908, Davenport and Cutter returned full of ideas for the new hotel which would rise up next to the Italian Gardens. The Davenport would be Cutter's last project in Spokane, after which he headed down to California. Built on a base of sandstone imported from Boise, ID, the hotel was completed in 1914 and featured air-conditioning to fend off the hot Spokane summers, an ultra-modern central vacuum, and housekeeping carts for staff to keep the rooms ready for new guests. A brilliant electric sign, among the first of its kind, proudly strobed the name "Davenport" to all those who passed beneath it.

The lobby of the Davenport was often home to live music. During the Depression, well-known Spokane pianist Arthur Zepp filled the room with the likes of Chopin, Brahms, Debussy and Schumann, and also more popular, contemporary, songs. Zepp had a good setup. He played in the lobby, and he and his wife were given a room as well as food. One account records Zepp recalling that "I had instructions to play something by Stephen Foster if I noticed that Louis Davenport was in the lobby." Often, the music from the piano had to compete with the other sounds of life at the Davenport. Bellhops could often be heard wandering through the lobby and other parts of the hotel, paging for patrons that they had messages for.

After the death of Louis Davenport, the hotel passed through the hands of different owners. Furniture was removed, decorations were torn down, and the hotel eventually fell into disrepair. In 1985, the hotel was completely closed down, until it was renovated by the Worthys in 2000. Today, the hotel stands open to the public, its ballrooms and lobby restored.

Week Five Digital History Post: History, Lawyers, and How to Borrow Without Stealing

Just like printing presses...

Copyright law is fuzzy. It's not the cute, cuddly, kind of fuzzy, either. It's more the "I dropped my bifocals in a vat of olive oil, and without taking time to wipe them off I'm going to read War and Peace" kind of fuzzy. When the fledgling government of the newly formed United States set about to create some sort of law governing creative works, the principles they set forth seemed to be pretty good. They were conceived to protect both the rights of owners and users of said material. The entire idea behind copyright was to encourage the creation and advancement of scientific, and other, works. As is so often the case, a couple hundred year of legislative drift occured, and the original intent of the law was lost to the legal wranglings of those who were more concerned with their own bottom line than they were with honoring the spirit of the law at its inception.

...copyright law get more complex with time 

In the past few years, the situation has become tinged with more than a little irony. At the same time that music, publishing, and movie corporations are successfully lobbying Washington for ever more restrictive laws concerning copyright, the internet is making enforcement of these laws harder and harder. While most people just take advantage of this and attempt to "slip through the cracks" by downloading music, computer software, and even books, as scholars we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. Realistically, while the digital age makes piracy easier, for those of us who choose to attempt to navigate the digital high seas legally, the changes in the way that information is used make things far more difficult. For example Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig of the Center for History and New Media write of an experience from the  they had when they were attempting to make an educational CD and ran into trouble. The use of the digital medium allowed them to include information from a number of different formats, from simple images to full video. While this meant that they are able to include far more information than they might have been able to in a book, it also means that they had to seek the permission from the copyright holders for each and every one of these items. Obviously this required the investment of a considerable amount of both time and money, two luxuries which most of us simply don't have.

The one saving grace for academics and researchers amidst all this copyright chaos is the term "fair use". According to the Copyright Act of 1976 there are certain conditions under which copyrighted materials can be used without obtaining permission from the owners. For those of us who can't hire a mercenary army of lawyers to secure rights for materials we want to use in the classroom, fair use provides us with a generous amount of leeway. Of course fair use—as all other things having to do with copyright law—remains fuzzy. Scholars cannot, however, allow the ill-defined nature of fair use to discourage them from using it. Far from it.  Employment of the fair use guidelines is much like using a muscle, in that they get stronger as they are used, and atrophy if they are not (visit here for more information on fair use).

The Creative Commons logo.

Utilizing and exercising fair use is key to protecting the rights of users in the protracted war over copyrights, but there are yet other answers to our problem. One of these is the site Creative Commons. Founded by Laurence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law, Creative Commons provides solutions for people who want to protect their intellectual property, but also want to be able to share it with others. Creative Commons has drafted up limited use licenses which make it much easier to share everything from photos, to music, and even to textbooks. For those who are keeping an eye on the original intent of copyright law. Creative Commons represents both a original approach and a return to the foundational principles of copyright law.

Embedding a Map and other things

All someone has to say is "extra credit" and suddenly I find myself to be motivated to do almost anything.  It took a little work, but if you create a map with your Picasa web album, you can upload it to websites and, in this case your blogger account.  Here are some of my images and where I took them below.


View Digital History Album Map in a larger map

Another neat trick is that you can take all of those images and embed them as a slideshow as well.  The following are all images which can be found on the map above.

Week Four Digital History Post: Documenting the Present and (hopefully) Preserving it for the Future

Alright, we have a lot of ground to cover this week. As historians struggle to come to grips with what the information age means for their practice, the prospects are both exciting and daunting. A perfect example of this is The Commons on Flikr. Through this new project, Flikr has teamed up with a number of institutions, such as NASA, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library (to name just a few) to allow public access to the images stored in these archives. The archives aren't just making themselves available for viewing, however, but are actually allowing visitors to interact with the archives, through the time-honored Flikr tradition of tagging.

An image from Flikr.com 

 

 

 

 

This program really is a unique solution to the problem of collecting history online. The internet allows the archival to become a two way process, with the public being able to actively participate. Many tools, such as blogs, email, and even instant messaging have already come to be in common use. The creation of The Commons signifies the discovery of yet another creative use of the internet to collect archival information. In mining information in this way, it is in effect, as Newsweek puts it “bringing the mountain to Muhammad.” By putting these photos on a site which people visit everyday, they are inserting themselves into people's daily routines. The process is remarkable non-invasive. Many people may not even realize that they are participating. By partnering with an already well-traveled site, ie. Flikr, these institutions are able to create far more traffic for their project than they would have been able to otherwise. The fact that this project has a presence in the real world, through the brick-and-mortar archives which have elected to participate in it, lends it an air of legitimacy that it might otherwise lack. It is a wedding of the popular and academic, in a way that will hopefully make the academic more popular, and vice-versa.

Of course, this is far from being the first attempt at using the interactivity of the internet to collect historical information. Far from it. The accessibility of the internet has allowed all manner of web sites aimed at collecting people's information and stories to pop up. A perfect example of this is the bevy of sites which popped up in the hours and days after the September 11^th attacks. Professionals and amateurs alike set up shop and opened public venues for people to express the experiences and reactions, saving them for others to look at and hopefully even for posterity. Though efforts such as these may seem unconventional, they in fact are operating very closely with the spirit of some of the earliest historians. Heroditus, and Thucydidies after him, sought to document what was happening in the world around them for the benefit of later generations. They not only labored to preserve the past, but the present as well. The internet by its very nature encourages a return to this original focus.

A Polaroid of a floppy disk.  Irony.

The biggest question which haunts us is not whether or not we will be able to collect enough information. It is instead how to preserve it once collected. The medium which Heroditus entrusted his historical record to was, and is, proven to last. While perhaps it may not last forever, time has show that parchment and other more traditional mediums can withstand the test of time. What of the digital medium? When paper technology changes, legacy technologies such as vellum do no simply become unreadable. With digital sources, this is often the case. If you were to come across documents that you had saved on an old floppy disk, how would you access it? Furthermore, how can you be sure that the data on the floppy hasn't been compromised. While time can weather away parts of ancient texts recorded on rock and parchment, other parts still remain for historians to document. In the digital medium, a little damage can compromise an entire work, or even worse, a collection of works. What is to be done? There is no easy answer. If we are to save all of this information collected on sites like The Commons or wherewereyou.org, it is a wrinkle which will need to be ironed out.

Week Three Digital History Post: Dealing with Art, Science, and XML

 HE PRACTICE OF online history can be quite intimidating.  Much as the great painters of the Renaissance, historians who venture into out into the web must be versed in a number of different disciplines.  At the very least they must (as my teacher has repeatedly intoned) know enough to speak with the people who know about these different facets of web-work.  This week's reading began by covering two seemingly different topics, namely how to build a website (making it attractive, functional, etc) and how to build an audience.  Really, the former can be seen as part of the latter.  In both cases you are taking the necessary steps to ensure that people will not only visit your website, but also continue coming back.  To this end, there are numerous concerns which must be taken into account.  As an artist, you must know how to create a website which is visually appealing and doesn't simply drive away visitors within the first 30 seconds.  Though many may argue that historians must hold firm and not acquiesce to concerns of form over substance, there is the very real concern that, as with a cactus in the desert, the prickly exterior will drive off those in need of the life-giving water contained within.

      Another theme covered this week is how to direct people to the information that they need.  Whether you are attempting to funnel traffic to you website so that people can make use of the information that you offer, or you are trying to create ways for them to effectively search your material, making sure that the information your history site offers ends up in the right hands is key.  In both of these cases, one must turn from practicing the art of the web to practicing the science of it.  In particular, allowing people to effectively search through the information that you have if, say, you have a database, can be particularly intimidating.  In my case, I would have to find someone who is well versed in the science behind computers to effectively tackle such a task.  Perhaps in your case, if you are a little more adventurous, you can experiment on your own.  The internet is just like history.  There is always more to learn.

Joining the History Web...

     The time has long since passed when computers used to take up whole rooms, and were only able to run mathematical computations and the like.  While few people have a whole garage that they can devote to storing a computer, everyone has the room on their desk, and even their lap, for a personal computer.  Even more so in the past few years, internet technology and access to it have changed so much that anyone with time and drive can host a web site.  Historians are no exception.  Yet while the technology is available to everyone, this doesn't necessarily mean that everyone should run a website.

     The truth of the matter is that there are steps which need in order to put a web-site together, and those who would run in haphazardly without taking time to consider them will end up being underwhelmed with the end product.  Time must be spent contemplating what kind of content you want to post.  Whether it be images, videos, text, or audio, there are decisions which must be made concerning things like quality and storage.  This being said, a well thought out approach will yield a web site which both impresses and informs.

     Two examples of well thought out websites with history-oriented content are the Center for History and New Media and the Virginia Center for Digital History.  Although both sites are well executed and provide access to reams of content, there are differences between the two.  For lack of a better word, the CHNM site just comes across as being, well, "sleeker".  While the text-heavy content of the VCDN website is a little daunting, the combination of images and links found on the CHNM site is far easier for the viewer to engage with.  While appearance isn't everything, when dealing with the reams of information that the internet presents, it helps make the viewing process far easier and more enjoyable.   

    Once one gets past the initial gloss, both sites show themselves to be great resources for historical information.  Both sites offer numerous links to a number of different kinds of resources.  Both offer resources for K-12 teachers looking to improve their classroom material.  Both sites also offer links to digital collections and exhibits online.  Of course, there are differences in content as well.  For example, the Research + Tools tab on the CHNM homepage offers access the popular Zotero extension for Firefox, links to ongoing digital research projects, and even books made available online in their entirety. 

     If you are thinking of putting together a history website, looking at the competition is a good place to start.  Visit both of the websites, and make sure to take time to explore their links and content.  Both sites are of good quality and present numerous examples of what (and likely some of what not) to do.