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.