Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist, The Library of Congress
Proposal Type: Working Group
Abstract: Historical sites, societies, museums and memorials are doing a lot of work to share their collections with the public over the web. However, most of those organizations are doing little to engage with their communities to collaboratively develop, share, and interpret the past. This workshop is focused on exploring and sharing ways that public historians are and can use the web to build, share and interpret born digital collection materials. Topics of possible interest include but are not limited to creating local collections of digital photographs, approaches to public digital ethnography, applications for mobile devices for collecting and sharing oral histories or photographs, or collecting projects making use of things like Omeka’s contribution plugin. Participants will publish their thoughts and ideas on a public blog in advance of the meeting and then engage in a lively discussion at the conference.
Seeking: 1: Are there other topics or issues I should consider in scoping this working group? Do readers think that the scope of this makes sense and hangs together? 2: I would like to find potential participants for it: So if you are interested, or know someone that would be interested, I would love to hear a bit about the kinds of work they are interested in sharing.
Related Topics: Digital, Oral History, Civic Engagement
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Trevor Owens, trow[at]loc.gov
If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.
As an adjunct in history teaching methods, I’ve worked with my grad students to partner with a small Japanese American history museum here in Portland Oregon.
We’ve used community-donated content to design an free iOS app walking tour – “Japantown PDX” http://bit.ly/1fDs8R2 and a free iBook “Portland’s Japantown Revealed.” http://bit.ly/SLJe86
The later pairs historic and contemporary photographs and invites users to blend historic residents of Japantown into modern settings. Both have been well received by the Japanese American community and hopefully serve as demonstration projects for similar projects in other communities. These two projects have been effective tools for local advocates for preserving the historic architecture of Old Town Portland.
Very interesting proposal. I have worked on a project called PhotosNormandie (https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/) that uses crowdsourcing as a way to document historical archives about WWII. Patrick Peccatte (his blog http://culturevisuelle.org/dejavu/1097) has worked on the project since 2007 and could be interested in your panel.
I really like this as a workshop because it would be an opportunity for participants to acquire some specific new skills. If you want pre- and post-conference participation, though, it might make sense to organize it as a working group.
Hi Trevor, this is an interesting discussion I would like to participate in. So I will email you about but before (and this is why I am publishing this comment) I wanted to precise better the terms of your proposal also for others eventually: the title is “born digital” so you would like to deal with native digital sources and documents ? No digitization, use and interaction with former analogical collections now available in the digital realm ? Also you say “web” but in your paragraph you also mention a variety of “digital” applications for these collections like for mobile devices etc.. Could we then consider to apply the questioning you have made to all kind of digital/digitized materials or should we keep a frontier there because this is what you want in your conversation for Nashville?
I, too, am a little confused along the same lines that Serge mentioned, but if in regard to collaborating with communities to *create* digital collections you do include actually digitizing formerly analog materials, then there might be some interesting crossover with the other proposal listed here on “Scan Days.” I posted a comment there as well. While their proposal seems a bit like a “how-to-host” workshop, perhaps there are points of common interest there.
Thanks for the comments and ideas! To clarify on Serge and Anne’s questions, yes, my hope is to talk about born digital materials and not about digitization. Don’t get me wrong, digitization projects and projects that are focused on crowdsourcing discription of digitzed historical materials are neat. However, what I’m interested in here is projects that deal with collecting and preserving born digital materials; that could be digital photographs documenting local communities, oral history projects, projects making use of web archiving tools to preserve websites. For some recent examples,
1) the Asian Pasific American museum recently ran “A Day in the Life of Asian Pasific America” which had members of the public submit photos of daily life via flickr http://smithsonianapa.org/life2014/
2) Smithsonian Folklife put out the “Will to Adorn App” that invites members of the public to use the app to document sartorial stories http://www.festival.si.edu/2013/Will_to_Adorn/GetTheApp/ Stories
3) The Museum from Main Street app and website invites people to contribute oral histories about their communities http://www.storiesfrommainstreet.org/pages/addyourstory.html
4) The September 11th Digital Archive has collected a range of born digital materials from everyday folks http://911digitalarchive.org/
Thanks for the comments and questions everyone. This has helped me a ton in refining and revising the workshop proposal. (I’ve included a revised copy of the description of it below). So I went ahead and submitted this, and if accepted, the next step would be that NCPH would put out a call for participation in the workshop in September. So stay tuned if it’s still something you are interested in!
(Web)sites of Memory: Connecting with the public to build born-digital collections documenting contemporary life
Abstract: Born-digital materials, photographs, emails, audio recordings, etc. won’t survive benign neglect like their analog counterparts. If we are to avoid a “digital dark age” we need to be building collections that document contemporary life now. The web offers a platform to engage with the public to build collections documenting contemporary life. Participants in this workshop will explore the possibilities of participatory born digital public history collection development.
Proposal: Historical sites, societies, museums and memorials are doing a lot of work to share their collections of materials from the past with the public over the web. However, most of those organizations are doing much less to document the present. Given that born-digital materials are unlikely to survive benign neglect in the way that analog materials have in the past, if we are to avoid a “digital dark age” we need to be building collections that document contemporary life now if we hope to have access to them in the future.
This workshop is focused on exploring and sharing ways that public historians are and can use the web to build, share and interpret collections of born-digital materials documenting contemporary life. Topics of possible interest include but are not limited to;
• creating local collections of digital photographs,
• approaches to public digital ethnography,
• applications for mobile devices for everyday folk to conduct, collect and sharing oral histories or photographs,
• collecting projects making use of things like Omeka’s contribution plugin to collect stories and perspectives
Each participant in this workshop will either reflect on an existing born digital participatory collection development project, or will use the workshop as an opportunity to develop a plan for a collecting project. Participants should describe the project they will be writing about or Participants will publish their thoughts and ideas on a public blog in advance of the meeting and then engage in a lively discussion at the conference. The objective of the workshop is to advance theory through refining ideas about the role that public historians can play in documenting the digital present for the future.