In response to this third loss, which he believes is the most troubling, Shirky states that “the problem now becomes actively deciding which groups to support and which groups to oppose” (pp. 209-211). This seems to intimate that there will have to be some type of organized body given the specific task to police (or watch) these groups. Is there any plausible solution to that problem? Should the host website that’s providing this platform have the right to censor/shut down these communities? How can they define what is “harmful”? It’s an interesting moral dilemma…

(Ah! Sorry Meredith, just realized we posted similar Qs within a short time of each other…)

a) think about creating a community, rather than just simple page hits, and

b) recognize the types of visitors you’re getting and adapt to their needs

I’m wondering what capacity we have to incorporate either of these two principles into our own sites.  What add-ons might Omeka offer that could help foster a community and track site visitors?

I notice that there are Social Bookmarking (http://omeka.org/add-ons/plugins/#socialbookmarking)  and Contributions (http://omeka.org/add-ons/plugins/#contribution) add-ons… would these be appropriate/useful to include on the sites for this class, or do you think they’d be better for a more substantial project?

My digital archive is intended to eventually serve as an online resource for the New York University Archives, based on one of its most frequently researched topics — student activism of the 1960s.  It will supplement a current University Archives online exhibit on 60s activism, which is relatively outdated and very broad in scope.  The project will document what is arguably the most substantial student demonstration in NYU’s history:  the National Student Strike of May 1970.  This protest included the forceful occupation of three university buildings, one in which a $3.5M military computer was held hostage to threat of explosion (and nearly did meet destruction before being saved by the NYPD).  I plan to digitize a variety of archival materials, ranging from correspondence to memoranda, and photographs to flyers, leaflets, and other forms of ephemera.

Additionally — more of an ethical question with the materials I’ll be digitizing.  My archive will focus on NYU student activism during the late 1960s, so you can imagine I have run into examples of profanity and obscene images.  The most common examples of obscenity are the messages that students left on the walls and windows of the buildings they occupied.  How do we feel about offensive phrases or words appearing in a public digital archive?  As a student of history, I would not think to exclude these images, for they help to capture the heightened emotion of the events.  But as for being useful to teachers and students, some caution might be appreciated.  Since it will be open to the public, should I include a disclaimer?  Where should it appear — on the main page, or as a message before one views each potentially offensive image?  Have you seen examples of this in other digital archives that deal with sensitive subject matter?

So what’s a good plan of action when we sit down to scan our own documents and photographs?  Should we save one JPEG copy and one TIFF copy?  I suppose it’s a conversation to have with the archives staff you’re working with.  I’m sure that some archives would appreciate having a “digital master” on their hard drives, especially if the topic is popular with researchers.  Others might not have the capacity for it.  My topic (60s student activism) draws a lot of research interest at the University Archives, so I imagine that we might want to keep some TIFF versions on the hard drive.

If we did wish to change something that is part of the Omeka template… what skills would we need to learn, and do you think it would be worth it?  Would trying to change it be rather risky?

Gallagher makes another point about age & generations playing a role in how people use virtual and physical environments, revolving around the idea that technology is a given for younger audiences.  He opines that “while young people love their virtual worlds, these worlds are more common for them than physical interaction with collections, spaces, and experiences.”  Younger generations are looking for something more real — the “real thing.”  Do you agree with this notion?  Couldn’t it also be argued that younger audiences’ comfortability with the virtual environment would make them more likely to consult it?  Do you think that this preference should even be viewed as a generational thing?

Also, I want to note that the readings for this week seemed to veer to the “copy-left.”  While I personally identify more with this side, I think we should also consider the current alternate view.  Are there any noteworthy recent publications written through the “copy-right” perspective?

While Spiro and Davidson focus primarily on collaboration amongst academics, Rosenzweig discusses the need for collaborative efforts between scholars and public history venues.  Echoing the previous commenters, I can’t help but point to these two groups’ many collaborative efforts that have been happening for decades.

Museums and libraries rather frequently organize workshops, panel discussions, seminars, and lectures within their facilities that directly involve the participation of academics.  They also commonly solicit the input of scholars in the research and creation of their exhibitions’ narratives and educational objectives.  Aren’t these forms of “collaboration?”  Or are they considered more as “cooperation”?  Differentiating between those two terms can get rather sticky.

The collaborative efforts Rosenzweig discusses occur online in the form of digital archives and exhibits that both democratize access to collections and digitally preserve materials.  While the advantages of these digital collaborative efforts are clear – are they necessarily better than the face-to-face, hands-on interactions at museums and libraries?  Do you foresee the digital forms of collaboration taking precedence over the traditional collaborative efforts?  What are the advantages & disadvantages of each?

The topic I researched last semester was the eight-day strike at Columbia University from April 23-30, 1968.  It is commonly considered a student protest against the Vietnam War, but I came to discover that it was much more than that.  It involved the participation of not only Columbia students, but students from throughout NYC, community members, and social activists from throughout the region.  It was also a civil rights protest, concerned equally with ending the war as it was with improving Columbia’s relations with its Harlem neighbors.  The events at Columbia throughout the late 60s proved very influential on campus activity across America, and this protest was the most significant that Columbia ever experienced.  It also caused a time of crisis for the university, and even for the nation, as evidenced by the intense national media coverage it received.

I worked with the Columbia Archives staff last semester in digitizing archival materials, and had a rewarding time going through their 75-box Protest & Activism Collection.  Due to the size of the collection, however, I feel as though I only scratched the surface.  There is a lot more potential for exploration!

As suggested by Amanda, I’m considering adding an NYU component and looking at NYU’s activities in this period (perhaps even just Spring 1968).  I know that NYU and Columbia students convened for several events, and I’d also love to compare/contrast their separate activities.

The overwhelming point Rosenzweig makes is that each group has been so set in its ways for ages and finds it difficult to change its mode of operation, or to even consider the value in another profession’s views.

Computer scientists see the best digital preservation as developing sophisticated search engines that operate directly on the data we see (the web page), while archivists are more focused on metadata (cataloging info), precision and standardization.

Archivists recognize that not every document can be saved, while historians don’t understand this and push for everything to be saved.

It seems that archivists are in the midst of two difficult stand-offs that are keeping digital preservation efforts down.  Producing a compromise between these groups would be the best way to move forward and consider some pieces of all three viewpoints.  How could these groups work together and resolve these conflicts realistically?  How could their professional organizations (i.e. AHA and SAA) help in such efforts?  Can we imagine more computer scientists on-staff at archival facilities?

… and my delicious username is: ashleyshannon

Change in historic scholarship during the postwar era was witnessed partly through the birth of the Public History intellectual movement, which emphasized the value of common people’s voices – the stories of average Americans.  This new scholarship widened the scope of historians’ studies and the types of people whose memories are deemed valuable by those who document the past.  In recent years, we have seen numerous books that focus on the “people’s history” and memories of everyday Americans.

Taking both of these developments into consideration, do you think that blog entries can be considered historical documents?  How would we even begin to process the mass of personal accounts resulting from the ascendancy of the blogosphere?  As public historians, we are interested in average people’s stories, but what do we do when there are so many of them?  How do we decide whose stories are most valuable and worthy of documenting?

Another issue in documenting blog entries and individual contributions to online communities is the wall between reality and cyberspace.  Since we can never truly verify who has created material, how can we vouch for a person’s identity and the truth of their story?  Are electronically published accounts not as reliable as talking to someone in person (i.e. – oral histories).  What other problems could the rise of the blogosphere create for historians?

I have about the same level of tech expertise as the average 23-year-old liberal arts grad.  I’m familiar with the blogosphere and networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.  I use some of them frequently in a personal, social capacity.  Yet when it comes to public history and my professional interests, there’s still a lot of ground I need to cover.  I think I may be the only one on the roster who took last semester’s History & New Media course, in which we primarily focused on digitizing documents to create online history exhibits and archives.  Our final project was to submit a grant proposal for a hypothetical digital history project that we had been researching all semester, though the projects never actually came to fruition on the web.

While the course had its strengths, I felt there was much that it did not allow for.  I look forward to actually creating a digital history project, rather than simply planning and researching for one.  I also want to look at networking opportunities and innovative ways of engaging the net public with history.  

See you all Wednesday!