Digital History Projects 11:30-12:20
Some projects that got us started in digital history
Angela- US Holocaust Museum project Children of the Lodz Ghetto
Dan- Salem Witch Trials social network analysis
Jenna- Digital art history
Kate- tracking Shakespeare acting troupes
Glenn- PBS digitizing clips
Seth- Eleanor Roosevelt Papers looking to publish online
What is digital history- definitions
Using a broad definition to include collaboration and inter-disciplinary methods
New York Public Library Building Inspector- old maps to graph them, has a mobile version- crowdsourcing
Red Lining Project- mapping existing geography for areas red lined by banks
Lots of things are included in digital history
Finding sources born online- an old blog can disappear
Article on problem of Adobe Flash- multiple versions and capturing things on multiple levels of file versions
Archeology of Geocities
Maintaining projects- avoiding the 404 error
Funding issue
How to avoid this problem?
Projects that aren’t accessible to the public
Eleanor Roosevelt Papers- working on accessibility
Putting things online
Vast collections and maintaining that information through a database
Providing the public with the needs to meet their needs
Permission to release information
NYPL- beaker that shows how all digitized collections are connected- time, place, etc…
Learning how to combine disciplines- how to code
Making your project your own but using cross disciplines without jeopardizing your vision
Maybe multiple databases and making them open
Do no harm approach to creating content- opensource software, awareness of copyright, standard description
Insular culture of coding on your own that might make it harder for others to use the project- Good digital history practices
Serve your purpose and serve others through standardization
Retrospective conversion
Sheer number of software outthere to use that create their own parts but not the core. A 101 database for dummies to learn digital history projects
Metadata and software standards- some bibliographies give sites to help with that
Archive of digital history as a master catalogue
Discussing what best practices for digital history would be
White House Office of Science and Technology looking at big data projects- proposals must include support for reuse of the project- maybe using standard formats or reputable digital repositories that has standards to submit
Do No Harm Principle- don’t make it too difficult that no one would want to be involved, the goal is to promote secondary usage
International organizations and programs designed to promote a longstanding lifecycle of materials- digitized or born digital
More repositories and digital archives
Ask before starting to take advantage of repositories to design the project
Before standards- look at different projects
Folger- Shakespeare document- bring scholarship to a website for everyone but everyone at each level wants different things
Citations are different at organizations and conversations need to reflect the numbers of groups so one standard may be too much to ask for- appropriate practice of digital history
Figure out who the audience is and what they want- text, image, object, and encourage visiting to see something or use digital methods to show objects archives can’t let you see
Librarians and digital historians at a different perspective
Communication issue that THATCamp can help fix
Omeka used in some spheres and not mentioned as much in others- what platforms are used
Digital exhibitions, collections catalogue, press releases, events calander- not useful on Omeka or at least IT departments don’t think of Omeka as a resource
Omkea map project- digital history class
Reasonable accessibly- free to a limit of data and less expensive than other sources
How do you predict who sees the site?
Google analytics to see if the audience they want is already there- who visits a site?
UMD- analytics to see who looks at databases- a large viewership from Japan due to a collection related to WWII at the time and then that information helped them consider making the site more accessible to that audience
British Museum- on this day/artifact of the day with an extension saying “explore this collection”
Social media can bring the audience that way- tweets, Facebook posts, etc…
