website link
http://web.mac.com/lra
Born digital
Many of the concerns a historian should have when dealing with content that is “born digital” is similar to that of the concerns they should have with traditional mediums, such as authenticity but digital content is largely a whole new ball game. The size alone renders most tenants and procedures central to a historian (up until now) ineffectual. So first I think that a historian dealing with digital content needs to forge new ways to come to old conclusions. When it comes to scholarly works in the field of history the information MUST be a certain par and there are time-honored methods in place to ensure such things but when it comes to digital content some of these methods will no longer work and some others need to be modified. Our methods need to evolve to fit the nature of digital content!! We need to find new ways to archive that can accommodate the volume that having the content be “digital” makes possible. Although, the accessibility of the Internet and the ability to cheaply communicate with others world wide is a benefit of digital content it also poses hurdles for the historian. For example, when collecting personal narratives online it’s important to keep in mind what you’re missing, things like linguistic ques, tonal changes, and repour.
All of these sites are examples of the archival possibilities of digital content and its ability to be contributed to, and viewed from, all over the world. These days, with sites like these just about any user who is relatively familiar with basic Internet surfing skills can upload digital content and create online collections pretty easily. The growing popularity of available open-source tools grants the average person the ability to effectively curate items rather than be dependent on third party web consultants.
The April 16 Archive: Uses OMEKA platform (a downloadable program designed with the non-IT specialist in mind-allows its users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming-depends on its open source developer and user communities for stability and sustainability)
**”Copyrights for materials in the archive are retained by the original creators, unless otherwise noted. All else © 2007-2008 Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. In partnership with the Center for History and New Media (CHMN), George Mason University. This site is powered by the Omeka platform. Please direct all inquiries to admin@april16archive.org.”
–this can be found at the bottom of the page no matter what link you follow within the site.
Hurricane Digital Memory Bank: Seems to be more of a third party maintained/built archive, unlike the OMEKA platform used for the April 16 Archive.
***”Copyrights for materials in the archive are retained by the original creators. All else © 2005 Center for History and New Media”-bottom of every page with in the site but like The April 16 Archive site is not actually imbedded into any of the materials/submissions. As soon as you arrive to the home page there is a featured story as well as a featured picture both prompting you directly below with a little submission box that says “Add Your Story” and “Add Your Photos”. When browsing through the collections you will also find another one of those little boxes on the page of every category that says “Add to the Memory Bank” and although this is slightly different than the quick boxes on the homepage because clicking it just directs to a page that provides more thorough directions for contributing to the site it seems to make the “anyone” can contribute and should vibe flowing. This is a wonderful feature and part of the reason that the effort to preserve the past through the use of “digital memory banks” is a growing more and more with each passing year.
September 11 Digital Archive:
This archive suggests that by allowing people to have a place to share their stories, responses, and sentiments gives a group of people agency and a better understanding after such a devastating tragedy. Providing some positives in a subject thought to bring only negative. An option of contribution explicitly provided on this site is the option to cut paste any emails a person’s had about the event as well as providing methods for submitting their story as well as images video.
All three of these sights so far are using their event as a way to better develop a system for historians to record and preserve in the twenty-first century. These larger and well funded projects help in the development of free software tools to that will aid in collecting, preserving, and writing of digital content. On this site however, whether or not an entry is copy written can be seen in the “view details”.
Flickr: Flickr has a tab to direct you to a more thorough explanation of the copyright you may come across in this site. The only real thing that sets this website apart from the first three is its encouragement and aim to create a community of publicly viewable photography collections, where the users can help posters identify unknown things in their photos. So not only can you contribute in photo but you can also contribute to the identification of the contents of photos posted by other users. There is a section within in this sight that is called the Creative Commons and I think it’s a famous idea. They have derived a symbol system of ranking a contributions copyright by the poster agreeing to offer their work under the creative commons license.
A brief example of the available options of ranking your contribution:
Briefly…
Attribution icon Attribution means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give you credit.
Noncommercial icon Noncommercial means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.
No Derivative Works icon No Derivative Works means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Share Alike iconShare Alike means:
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
So with the poster agreeing to offer their work under the creative commons license, the symbols make it very easy to ascertain the contributions copyright standing.
Copyrights
“copyrights”
In our readings thus far we have been confronted with the issue of the instability that exists within using a digital medium. In this weeks reading pertaining to copyright we are taken through a bit of it’s origins and changes through out time. Copyright seems an instable regulation that although an attempt to evolve with demands it’s confronted with is slow and easily influenced by power. It has to evolve and expand as the range of creative work expands but because of this it is seemingly inconsistent, leaving it vulnerable to manipulation. With the growing nature of creative works copyright is found to be largely open to interpretation. Copyright seems to do its best to find a balance between the public and the private, the user and the owner, but until that balance is found there will be many grey areas.
So historians and scholars are left with the inconsistencies of copyright and the instability of digital mediums to reckon with.
The article is very forthcoming with the fact that due to the ever changing nature, the vastness, and the relatively new medium that digitizing is makes issues of copyright difficult. So the first issue of copyright pertaining to digital media that may not be as overtly addressed in the readings is the having an instable, subjective, even unclear system responsible for protecting an unstable, mysterious, ever changing medium.
Since the creative work generated by historians is generally very dependent on the past creative works of others the idea of intellectual work being closely protected as a persons “property” seriously impedes the process of producing any sort of historical narrative.
The application of the same copyright law that exists for traditional mediums regulates cyber-mediums but the open/accessible nature and shear size of the Internet leaves the user and the owner with even more legal responsibility. There is so much existing in the Internet ether and it’s so easy to put something out there that it’s relatively impossible to really monitor it. For most works that exist only on the Internet it’s unlikely that you will have a publisher or any sort of person who is keeping track of your work to assume the legal responsibilities and enforcing that the copyright of your work be adhered to. It’s also far more difficult to know if your work is being lawfully obtained for “fair” use because it’s relatively easy to access information that is out in cyber space. As if the laws in this country weren’t hard enough to keep track of, they don’t call it the “world wide web” for no reason. With traditional mediums the laws in other countries are much less of a concern but the world can access the works done on the web so although someone in the US may be violating your copyright to something a person using it for exactly the same purpose in another country may not be violating any of their laws. More grey area!
In attempts to keep up with digital mediums the DMCA was approved, which even though it is an Act focused on the nature of the digital medium it also allows corporations the right to control how their digital products are used even after we pay money for the right to them!?! This doesn’t seem fair to me at all. Although I think it perfectly fine for an owner to require a user to agree upon certain terms before granting that user rights, once that user has paid or meet their agreement as long as they operate within the agreement and under fair use the owner shouldn’t be able to continue to impose more stipulations. This act makes it difficult to “fairly” use purchased work without somehow breaking the law, even if the only intention is educational. I think it’s horrible that you can photocopy a section of a book but you can’t copy a section of a DVD.
As historians we are purveyors of fact, fact finding masters, ambassadors of fact, and the ways we find to collect and display them for specific purposes is our art but if copyright law doesn’t protect “facts” where does that leave us? How is it that a fiction novel that took only days to produce is protected as “property” but a factual text of World War One that took years to compile and present in a context specific manner is fact and hence in no way the property of the historian?? This makes absolutely no sense. It’s as if the work of a historian is not worth protecting because legally it is not see as “creative”? The presentation of fact absolutely can be creative and it most certainly requires work.
If you are not aware of copyright laws there is a good chance that you could be prevented from producing your work or even face legal repercussions so it seems like it’s something a historian should become savvy on, right? At the same time if you are too cautious there is a good chance that you could be denied right to a “property” that you did not need permission for in the first place or have to pay to use something that by law you could’ve had access to for free. As of now there really isn’t a different copyright law for cyberspace but I think that there should be. There should be copyright law for every differing form of medium because I think that by trying to generalize all creative works is largely what leaves copyright law open to so much interpretation.
Wikipedia
Oscar Wilde
Discussion: Entry is listed under the “Good Article Criteria” in the LGBT studies, Poetry, Ireland, Philosophy, Theatre, Childrens Literature, and Biography Wikiprojects. Just as the entry is measured up to a certain criteria (good criteria) ranking, so are the projects. If a project takes on an entry it appears that they also assume some of the responsibility of its accuracy.
*it is advised that revisions should reflect consensus and when in doubt one should discuss revisions first on the “talk” page before committing.
History: Here the editing and posting to the entry can be monitored. The most interesting part is being able to track all activity of the entry from initial post to the petitions for demotion/promotion in rating. Before an entry can climb in status it has to be approved. You can find links in the history tab that will take you back to any discussion and any user involved. This is where the information can be found about the average edits per month and who has made the most edits. In this case Jmabel is one of the most frequent editors of this entry and when you follow the link back to her user bio, if it is actually all true, it is quite impressive.
Red Light District
Discussion: This entry is rated as start-class for quality and “low-importance” on the importance scale. Although I was unable to find how exactly there could be a system that was capable of deeming “importance” it is exemplary of the WARNINGS that exist within Wikipedia if they are looked for.
In the way of sponsorship, the Sociology Wikiproject is its only one, so it makes me wonder if the lack of support by multiple wikiprojects is in any way a reflection of this entries poor rating.
History: There were some interesting interactions coming from a specific user on this entry, by the name of Wikipediatrix. His overt instigation compelled me to explore his bio where I found what appeared to be some sort of Wikipedia mantra, or “axioms”, as he puts it. Whether or not they are all truths is debatable but I think it goes over some very interesting subjects relevant to digital work. In his issues with the entry I was brought to the question, “what should be done if something posted to an entry is indeed a fact but there isn’t necessarily a primary source available to support said fact?” Wikipediatrix has a qualm with the reference to by another user to Vanburen St. in Phoenix Arizona. His argument a valid one, “all information needs to be sourced.” but I am from Arizona and happen to know that by definition, Vanburen, could in fact be considered a red light district but I too was unable to find any scholarly work to support this. How do we navigate culturally “known” information if a solid narrative does not yet exist? This whole thing is troubling because I do think that the only way for Wikipedia to become a truly reliable source is for it to adhere to specific guidelines but what of cases like this?
Stonewall Riots
Discussion: Currently this entry is a “Good Article” nominee, meaning that it is in the process of being reviewed for approval to be listed as a Good Article. Within this process you can find more warnings and forms of checks and balances such as users who have made significant contributions to the entry are not permitted to review it. It is also listed as a former “featured article”, all these things are tools that can aid a person in determining how reliable the entry is, has been, and is trying to be. In reviewing this entry it appears that users who birth an entry desire for it to be within the scope (picked up by) a well ranked wikiproject, even in its early stages because being associated with a well ranked project can aid in the promotion of a lower ranked article in its future.
History: Again this links the searcher to changes being made, in what order, and by whom. By scrolling through the entries history I came to realize that the usage of even one word can sometimes be debated over back and forth for several entries. In doing this I see signs of a community backing with some entries, like all of the active members have to argue with each other until they agree upon the “most” accurate word.
*An interesting wikipedia tid-bit I came across while perusing this entry was that in the Wikipedia world there are “respected” or “known” reviewers at each rating level. Users who have invested a great deal into an entry even seem to pursue certain “known” reviewers within its field. This is another example of there being a strong community backing within Wikipedia.
The exploration of these wikipedia entries has reaffirmed to me that is an unstable source for a historian or any scholar but whether it be wikipedia or a similar community kept encyclopedia type site there are some real possibilities here. Within wikipedia it appears as though there are many efforts being made to make it a more reliable source, checks and balances, approvals, criteria that has to be met before
digitizing the past
I will add more to this post later on but I wanted to get this link up just in case it peaks anyone’s interest as it does pertain to this weeks blog topic. It is the first, I also recommend perusing the others, in a series of articles by the New York Times addressing how the internet and technology in general is influencing the way people read. We are moving towards a society that has an entirely new way to absorb and recieve information than what has been the standard for hundreds of years.
So sorry it’s late.
This week’s assignment is to write a website review for two public history websites that are related to our area of interest. My preferred focus is the history of sexuality and as such I have become a big fan of Michel Foucault. This site is a living site that changes and grows regularly. It is clear that the site owner takes a great deal of interest in continuing to develop it. The purpose of this site is clear from the home page, “Welcome to the michel-foucault.com site. This site provides a variety of resources relating to the work of the famous French philosopher who lived from 1926 to 1984.”
After a brief purpose statement the Home page opens up to the current months Foucault quote. This is clearly intended to catch the eye of the average web user as opposed to the historian or academic because they are generally very powerful and profound statements that would hold little use to us without knowing more about it. Most of the options found in the sidebar of the home page are pretty clear and succinct. “FAQ” will take you to info/frequently asked questions related to Foucault. For the most part the information found here is barely informative and the most useful aspect being the “where” Q and A, “Where can I find definitions of the terms Foucault uses?” “Key Concepts” is pretty direct and gives useable definitions of Foucault concepts as well as providing a link to one of the site owners’ publications if you desire more structured and thorough information for more in depth Foucault research. “Links” has a pretty comprehensive listing of Foucault websites in both English and other languages. It seems as though this is an area that has received more time and effort than other sections of this site. All information and contributions are accounted for which provides the user with a certain level of security. This site is equipped with a very detailed spread of contact info, background, purpose, and contributors.
This site here has absolutely no hand holding. Just in case you could not tell it is devoted to linking it’s user to social and political philosophers as well as events and concepts. I have used this site but I also chose it because of it’s title, “Generation Online”. I find this site to be very curiously arranged in a way that can make you feel like if you don’t know where you are you are in the wrong place. These days you assume that as soon as you land on a site you should be able to understand what the product/point of the site is and who it’s aimed at. There isn’t necessarily any sort of clearly marked path for the visitor here but someone with a decent amount of surfing skills could very well find this site quite useful as I have. The “main index” page gives the user absolutely no indication of what they are getting themselves into. “Reference” takes you to a page covered in pictures representing primary of the site. The pictures are a bit cramped; I’d go as far as saying overwhelming, but there is an option for it all to appear in alphabetical text instead. Click on a picture and it’ll take you to a topic page that will have brief summaries, links to all the information their website has to offer on the topic as well as some other useful bits.
From home page click: Reference >>picture>>>basic info (with links to info beyond that)>>>more refined information
If your chosen topic happened to be a person the topic page would show you what that persons major works are, key concepts related to that individual, any figures or events that might be related, as well as Associations. Then there is a short biography that is followed by what I find to be the most useful aspect of this site. There are links to what information or work the site has to offer beyond what you are seeing, links to what other sites have to offer (letting you compare what is out there in a more directed manner), other resources such as interviews and video, and lastly a bibliography. The “What on Earth are we doing here?” takes you to contact and donation info as well as an admission from the site operator revealing that he too is aware of some of the confusion within the site. This site may be a work in progress that is never complete but if you’re willing to explore it has a solid amount of useful information.