It is now pretty clear that the authors of Digital History are with the Center for History and New Media one of two groups who collaborated to create the 9/11 digital archive. As such material from this archive is frequently used to back up the claims of the authors. I would have to say that even though the authors might be blowing their own trumpet, the 9/11 is an excellent example of an archive whose content makes a strong case for its collection and preservation.
A lot of the new digital databases are dependent on voluntary submissions from people or organizations in order to keep expanding their collections and maintain interest (which usually means funding as well). For this component of the site you need to learn who the potential audience (and possible participants in a site) might be and how to best reach out to them. The authors give the example of doing an archive on the Iraq War vs. World War II. Iraqi War veterans being relatively young might be alright with submitting their stories or any other material they have through texting or a submission system on the database's website, however the older veterans from World War II might prefer an email correspondence or even a mail correspondence (the authors don't mention the second possibility). An additional observation I can add is that is you are trying to persuade an organization to donate material rather then an individual they might also prefer to communicate through email, mail, or even fax (in certain scenarios). It is therefore highly important to tailor the outreach portion of a digital project to the likely audiences and/or donors. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/collecting/index.php
The second chapter of Digital History for this week is focused on the issue of digital preservation. The most important point that the authors have in this chapter is that there is a preservation issue when it comes to digitized information.
According to the authors digital information is arguably more fragile then its non-digital counterpart. While a paper document can take a certain amount of damage and still be readable, information stored on a CD will often become unusable at the first sign of corruption. Because of this it is especially important that a digital preservation project has specially trained staff to ensure the integrity of each electronic record.
Apart from this the other preservation issue the authors tackle is the rapid evolution of digital technology vs. digitized information. Digital technology is evolving so rapidly that it outpaces programs and devices used to hold digital information making retrieval of older information potentially problematic. If programming language changes rapidly it may be difficult to retrieve information stored with an earlier version of a program (say a file was created with a program on Windows 95). When these situations come up specialized (and often expensive) software is needed to retrieve and translate the older information into a newer form. The authors talk about some of the custom programs that can ensure that information is encoded in a way that is more likely to handle the rapid advancement of computer technology. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/preserving/index.php
Next we concentrate on a specific form of outreach called crowdsourcing. In recent years open media sites have appeared online. These sites are freely accessible and used by many different people. Historical collections can be copied and posted on these websites and after being tagged with relevant labels they can attract a new audience. http://www.flickr.com/commons?GXHC_gx_session_id_=6afecb2055a3c52c http://www.spellboundblog.com/2008/01/17/loc-flickr-equals-crowdsourced-tagging/
The example used for our reading is the Library of Congress and Flikr. Recently the Library of Congress decided to make two of its digital photograph collections available on flickr. The idea was that it would generate a lot of new attention for the photograph collections contained within the Library of Congress. This is probably true although the drawback is that flickr like many other open sites is to a certain extant user editable. In the case of flickr users can add notes directly on to a photograph and comments below. The problem is that many of the comments added are not even remotely historic and add nothing to the collection. For more historical background users are better off using the Library of Congress website and even getting an account which allows users to interact with the historical aspects of a collection. http://northwesthistory.blogspot.com/2009/06/lick-this-loc-flickr-and-limits-of.html https://myloc.gov/Pages/default.aspx
The final group of readings for this week go back to the issue of preservation and we take a look at a program called Omeka, an open source software program specifically designed for the preservation and online publication of historic material. There is also a more simplified online version of the program called omeka.net. http://omeka.org/about/ http://www.omeka.net/
I have yet to use either version of Omeka but if the sample sites we are given are indicative of the possibilities of the program then I would have to say I am impressed. Although the question of how easy it is to use the program has yet to be answered. http://omeka.org/showcase/ http://www.digitalamherst.org/
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