In one of our previous classes, we discussed the issue of digital publishing and its overall reception within the scholarly community. This issue was again raised in both Exploring the History Web and Computing and the Historical Imagination. It troubles me that the authors of digital publications of scholarly works have received from their university administrators (and those who grant them tenure track) so little enthusiastic support for innovative approaches to history (according to one of the articles we read a few weeks back). Cohen and Rosenzweig illustrate the fact that a traditional scholarly publication in analog form can only encompass so many images and illustrations while the same work in a digital format can include exponentially more images as well as links to pertinent archival collections, slideshows, and other media not as accessible in print form. In Computing and the Historical Imagination, Thomas quotes Robert Darnton to emphasize the notion that it is often difficult to do justice to research conducted for a publication through the fixed form of a published book.
Might it be that many historians and scholars are less willing to accept this new form of publishing because of the way in which it will transform the traditional processes of research and writing? Could it be that they are worried about what Thomas describes as the “fluidity of the medium,” the ability to continually refine, rewrite, and republish an already published piece of work? How, if at all, will this change the historical profession? Should we be worried it will?
Sorry this is long… kind of got carried away with it.
I work as the archivist at a production company here in New York City, locating archival footage for producers. Because of the exorbitant prices charged per second by stock footage vendors, I spend much of my time searching for public domain footage. More often than not, though, it is not the quality or appropriateness of the footage that determines its inclusion in a documentary, but rather the price. The same scenario was mentioned in Owning the Past with reference to David Kirsch whose request to publish an image by an unidentified copyright holder was denied and “had to settle for a much less revealing photograph.” Like Vaidhyanathan argues in Copyrights and Copywrongs, today more than ever, copyright law allows those controlling it to limit the use of their products, thereby stifling creativity and potentially deteriorating the quality of future works produced by others.
That said, I do believe it is crucial for copyright to preserve the interests of the creators, else for many, there will be little incentive to publish or create again if they feel they are being cheated out of potential gains. I recently read a book on J. Robert Oppenheimer, a collaborative effort by two scholars who spent 25 years researching and writing. Were copyright regulations still reflective of the original 1783 bill passed in Connecticut, the time these authors spent working on the book comes close to the length of time for which it would have been covered by copyright. Such numbers seem arbitrary and unfair to the authors. I agree with Mark Twain; copyright should remain in effect through the creator’s life and for a limited time beyond it (though 70 years is excessive).
I do not agree with the notion that books, websites, songs, screenplays, and other published/unpublished materials are created for eventual modification by others. Just because a song is out there does not mean it can or should be sampled, regardless of how changed it might be in its newer form. Just because Bond enthusiasts might want to add their own story to the list of 007 tales does not mean they have a right to contribute to Ian Fleming’s literary creation without permission.
Perhaps I’m coming across very copyright-right because I’m still a bit confused. If, according to Cohen and Rosenzweig, copyright “does nothing to protect ideas, only their formal and fixed expression” why are we so worried about books, for example, not in the public domain? Can the information not still be used for future scholarship as long as the exact modes of expression have changed? Is all that we are losing by copyright the ability to take the actual words (or song lyrics, etc.) and use them in our own creation? I think our own creativity will make up for this loss.
Each of this week’s readings emphasized the value of collaboration. Through four salient points, Roy Rosenzweig illustrates the importance of collaboration between academic historians and library, museum, and archive professionals. Not only are libraries, museums, historical societies and archives where “the past is,” as Rosenzweig remarks, but their employees also offer complementary expertise which provides the impetus for collaboration. Like Rosenzweig, Lisa Spiro and John Unsworth more than a decade before her, champion the notion of collaboration, acknowledging the benefit of pooling the aggregate knowledge of academic historians, archivists, librarians, technologists, and even students, blending a medley of ideas and opinions.
I agree with each of this week’s authors that two heads are (sometimes) better than one and that collaboration can and often does lead to more thorough end-products, but have academic historians not already set this in motion? I am troubled with Rosenzweig’s and Spiro’s use of the number of authors credited to any one particular work as a method of judging collaboration (or the lack thereof) giving little regard to those researchers and contributors to whom the publication of scholarly histories is often indebted. Though such contributors are often not credited as co-authors, their work (I would argue a form of collaboration) is made evident in the acknowledgments, something all, if not most, manuscripts include. I disagree with the differentiation between collaboration and cooperation, and wonder how one can draw a finite distinction between the two. It seems like Spiro bases the distinction on the quantity of work completed and the means used to communicate with each other. Is this fair to do?
I agree with the notion that historians should be willing to venture beyond their own research and look towards others, both within and outside of their fields. However, the comparison between the humanities and the more traditional hard sciences irked me. Perhaps I was being too sensitive, but the feeling of being preached the benefits of more open collaborative research like those in the hard sciences made me consider those scientists whose collaborative methods were being praised. Agreed, such scientists often work in larger groups or teams and often cooperate with researchers at other institutions. But let us not think that all sceintists are as open with their research as it seems Spiro is proposing historians be with theirs, broadcasting research on the web for anyone to access and contribute. They, too, are looking for individual credit.
I do not think the key is to require history and humanities students to work collaboratively with each other if this means forcing them to work in groups. An unsuccessful group project might only lead students to resent collaborative work in the future. Perhaps instead of group work, educators must emphasize the fact that almost no published work is a work produced in isolation. Despite the number of authors, a published work is often the product of many voices. If students are taught to recognize this (with or without engaging in their own group work), there should be little fear they will refuse collaborative work in the future.
I am designing my website around a collection of letters housed at the Stamford Historical Society in Stamford, Connecticut which I hope to use as the foundation for a masters thesis. The letters, written to and from a senator’s wife who lived in Stamford from the 1850s until her death in the early 1890s, shed light on an era long since gone while at the same time breathing renewed life into their author, Mary Ann Dickinson Smith. Though the letters reveal but one woman’s story, they offer the contemporary reader a chance to reexamine notions of femininity, domesticity and the often inaccurate assumptions of women’s restricted roles and responsibilities in Victorian America. Using Mary Ann Dickinson Smith as a case study, my website will address the notion of the Victorian woman through the letters she so meticulously saved.
Within the past year, the Stamford Historical Society has acquired a significant number of additional letters (well over 100) to be accessioned with the existing collection. Though eager to leave the letters with the historical society, the donor, Mary’s great granddaughter, is concerned that her relative’s correspondence will sit, without any sort of web presence, unknown to researchers and consequently unused. Combining images of the letters themselves with additional archival research (images of Stamford, of activities Mary participated in, and the places she visited, for example) I hope not only to recreate Mary’s life and the environment in which she lived, but to bring attention to the collection itself.
While reading Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, debate over the superiority of networks versus hierarchies continued to trouble me. In Glut, Alex Wright traces the history of networks and hierarchies from their prehistoric roots through to their modern day equivalents, and the efforts by enthusiasts and attackers of each to legitimize one over the other. In so doing, he describes the fluctuating notions of networks and hierarchies, the people, places, and periods who supported one over the other, as well as those who helped to develop notions of both simultaneously.
Wright acknowledges the democratization of the current social landscape with the introduction of today’s burgeoning “computing environment” (Friedman, 218), an idea Friedman also emphasized in Electric Dreams. With the proliferation of the personal computer and the internet, new networks of unexpected users and contributors are constantly being established while existing and, until now, potentially uncontested hierarchies are scrutinized and redefined. Nevertheless, Wright does not dismiss the necessity or the inherency of hierarchies. As he writes on page 28, “Just as all human beings are born with a disposition toward spoken language, so we are also born with a tendency toward hierarchical categories.” In his first chapter and throughout the entire text, Wright makes his vision clear: networks and hierarchies work in tandem. “In other words,” Wright states, “networks and hierarchies not only coexist, but they are continually giving rise to each other” (Wright, 8).
Though I understand their distaste for hierarchical structuring and top-down governing, I am still having trouble with George Landow’s and Ted Nelson’s concept of removing all hierarchical structures underpinning the Internet as we know it today. Perhaps it’s my lack of computer programming knowledge that is preventing me from understanding this better. I can only wonder then how Nelson and Landow would react to the idea of the archive itself – an institution where documents and items are often preserved within a fixed hierarchical structure, from a collection to a sub-collection, a specific box, a folder, and then the item itself. Would they seek to revise and restructure this as well?
There is little denying that the advent and mass-production of the personal computer in the 1970s and 80s, the rise of the internet in the 1990s, and the proliferation of computers in private homes, schools, libraries, and a variety of other public venues by the turn of the 21st century has helped to democratize the way in which we express our ideas and broadcast them to the world. In Electric Dreams, Ted Friedman includes this among the “utopian hopes” inspired by and accomplished with the widespread use of the computer. Those with sufficient means enjoy the luxury of one, if not several computers within the comforts of their own home. Others take advantage of internet cafes and public, free-to-use spaces such as libraries and school computer labs.
Regardless of the location, however, computers, and, more specifically, the internet, provide all users the ability to access the same sites (with some exceptions), to contribute to the same blogs, and to share their information in much the same manner. Boundaries are blurred when it comes to personal credentials. Those without the finances, the accreditation, or the know-how to publish in a scholarly or commercial forum, can do so easily through the click of a mouse. It is this democratization that Friedman believes is one of the essential contributors to the “utopian sphere of cyberculture” (220).
Though personal computing provides such advantages, in the conclusion to Electric Dreams, Friedman zeros in on unnecessary surveillance as one of the dystopian fears of the personal computer and what he now terms the “Invisible Computer.” With computing functions on something as small and unnoticeable as a cell phone, the “end of privacy” becomes a legitimate fear. He counters such fears with the utopian ideal of individual empowerment. Just as a phone connected to the internet can be used inappropriately in a locker room (as per his example), so too can it be used to garner information hidden from individuals by government authorities.
My question then stems from research I conducted for another class recently. With so many forums for public speech and presentation on the web, how can we control what is made available and accessible? Is this even possible? Friedman champions the internet as a forum for promoting creativity and democratic principles, a venue for the release of government secrets and necessary truths. Yet, this feeling of individual empowerment is not always in our best interests and may often jeopardize individuals in the process.
Hi, I’m Rachel Moskowitz. This is my third year in the Masters in History program combined with a certificate in Archival Management and Historical Editing, a precursor to the existing masters program. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania a few years ago with a degree in American history, and minors in Classical Studies and Women’s Studies. A summer spent at the historical society in my hometown and months of archival research for my undergraduate thesis made me consider archives as a profession and led me to apply to NYU. I currently work as the archivist for a production company specializing in documentaries for networks such as the History Channel, National Geographic, and Discovery.
For my internship seminar, I created an online exhibit for the NYU Archives highlighting New York University and its students during wartime years, from the Civil War through World War II (website will hopefully be up soon!). To build the exhibit, I downloaded a free trial of Dreamweaver, and spent the thirty days until the trial expired learning the program and structuring my site. The internship provided a much-needed introduction to the world of computer programming, though I’m still rather hesitant when it comes to such things. I’m excited to build on this knowledge with the material we’ll learn in the course! As for social networking sites, I have a facebook account (am proud to say I think I was one of the first 1,000 or so members, haha), but am rather unfamiliar with much else out there. There’s a lot to learn, and I’m confident we’ll do so this semester!
Looking forward to class this afternoon!
