https://scalar.chapman.edu/scalar/test-book-/users/144

During the Scalar project, I learned many things about multimodal publishing. The publishing site utilizes a variety of multimodal features such as YouTube videos, images, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Internet URLs, and archives. I tried to link as many multimodal features as I could on my pages to give them some variety in interactiveness. Scalar also teaches you how to link pages to one another to help the flow of information go smoother. 

When adding widgets, I chose to use the Carousel, where you create a responsive gallery showing you media from the path. This one allows you to add as much imagery as you want. I also chose to create the visualization widget, which creates visualizations out of pages, media and their relationships. This one almost appeared like a circle and gives you information when you hover each relationship. 

I understand that this was just a practice to become more comfortable with using the site and all its features. However, I think this practice is very intuitive and I can see how all these skills we have learned could be really useful when actually pulling information from a variety of sources and inputting the data. This resource is a lot more complex to use than something like AdobeSpark, or WordPress. It is laid out similarly in the blog format but otherwise there is a lot more detailed user input required to make the book function. 

Archive Practicum Ten 

My proposal for the Center for American War Letters would be to utilize digitization, OCR, collections, and one-dimensional classification. To begin with, the Center for American War Letters could amplify its outreach by utilizing OCR. As we learned in our class reading, Optical Character Recognition, OCR is the process of converting “images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text” (Wikipedia, 2021). The reason I believe this would be a good idea is because OCR is mostly used as a form of “data entry from printed paper and data records” (Wikipedia, 2021). Most letters from the war are going to be printed documents or handwritten. This seems like the best way to scan and digitize them in my opinion. 

Another way I think you could organize these papers would be by sorting them into collections. From our class reading, Digitization and digital resources in the humanities, we learned that digitization is a way to “deliver digital representations of cultural and historical documents to… foster greater understanding of the material they hold” (Terras, 2012). While I understand that digitizing can be expensive, I think that the benefits make it worth the investment. It allows “dispersed collections to be brought together” and that’s something I think is extremely important, especially when dealing with letters that may be dispersed. Sorting these letters by collection would improve the organization of the site so that viewers can easily find correspondence similar to what we read in class between Wally and Florence. 

Finally, I think using classification schemes could be a good way to also organize the data once it is digitized. These classification schemes could act as a way to sort the information down to details such as time, place,and topic of conversation. As we learned in our class reading, Classification and its structures, one-dimensional classification structures seem to be the best fit for something like this because they typically use “nouns and adjectives” and often group things as categories ( Sperberg-McQueen, 2004). In my midterm project I talked about how this type of classification could be beneficial for information that needs to be sorted based on words rather than numbers. I think this is true for these letters as well. One-dimensional classification would be beneficial for pulling out words from letters to categorize them and make it easier to be sorted. All of the suggestions could be beneficial for the American War Letters when trying to amplify their outreach. 

Cited Sources: 

Warwick, C., Terras, M. M., & Nyhan, J. (2012). Digital Humanities in Practice. Facet Publishing.

A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth, Sperberg-McQueen. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/

Optical character recognition. (2021, April 07). Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition

After watching the video “Into the Future” I was able to identify that scarcity worries me far more than abundance. The video talked about how methods of retaining information have changed so much over time that preserving data has become extremely difficult. I think having too much data, or abundance, does come with its issues but they don’t outweigh the issue of scarcity. 

In the video, most examples used seemed to reinforce the idea that scarcity is a big problem. For example, fires, floods, and acid in printed materials has caused physically stored information to be damaged or destroyed. Another idea discussed was magnetic tapes and how they were used to store information.  Over the course of 20 years, it became difficult to find a machine that was capable of playing them and the tapes themselves began to decay. Both of these concepts of scarcity are scary because they describe the loss of information and the negative implications that come along with the loss. 

An effective approach to ensure that cultural memories and significant data are not lost would be to improve conversion efforts as technology begins to change, not after it’s already gone. For instance, the Navajo nation used magnetics tapes to store information but these tapes began to decay. They began to use  electronic recordings as a way to  capture valuable information that bridges the gap between past to future. This effort appears to be a viable way to give access to information from the tribes to  those living in future times. This concept is true for all information though, if it is something valuable that needs to be preserved, then make sure you are able to store it properly for future generations especially as technology changes. 

As we learned from our reading, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era”, the system for preserving the past  has evolved over centuries and is in crisis. The author believes that historians need to take hand with archivists in building a new system for the coming century so that we can make sure to digitize our present as well as our past. Despite the author’s  arguments that abundance can be troublesome due to navigating the growing records and digital data, I still stand by my assertion that scarcity seems much worse. We need to learn from the past and be able to access these sets of data so that we don’t make the same mistakes. 

A perfect example of this was seen in the video about hazardous waste disposal and how important it is to know where these sites are so we don’t harm the planet further to protect future generations. In our Archive Projects from this week’s module we see great examples of valuable data from the past such as the 9/11 archive featuring first-hand stories and digital images. I understand it’s important to move forward and preserve our present, but it’s equally as important to preserve the past as well even if this causes an abundance complexity.

Cited Sources:

Home · September 11 digital archive. (n.d.). Retrieved April 05, 2021, from https://911digitalarchive.org/

Scarcity or abundance? (n.d.). Retrieved April 05, 2021, from https://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/scarcity.php

Kevinglick (Director). (2009, August 24). Into the Future: On the preservation of KNOWLEDGE (CLIP 1) – VIDEO DAILYMOTION [Video file]. Retrieved April 05, 2021, from https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa9dp6