Digitising beyond the walls
Thinking about digitisation on any great scale tends conjure images of archives, libraries and museums, whose job it is to collect and retain the records of our culture and history. But just as there is a growth of contemporary user-generated content online, a growing number of amateur and private collectors and historians are presenting a digitised view of the past online without involving a professional curatorial eye.
A recent U.S. conference on the Digital Humanities highlighted the role of amateur endeavour in the creation of collections, and the role of digitisation in creating virtual museums and exhibitions for online display to the public. It signals that institutions are not the only hosts of worthwhile digital content, and may even get less traffic to their digitised collections than many amateur sites. There's a great write up about this conference topic here.
In New Zealand, while it can take a bit of digging, it is not hard to see the growing presence of our own amateur and private effort. Perhaps most readily discoverable are the websites dedicated to family history. For example, New Zealand Bound's free pages hosted by Rootsweb show the extent of effort put in by part-time genealogists to get New Zealand shipping lists transcribed online . A website dedicated to Dunedin's Northern Cemetery encourages contributors to add biographical details and photographs of the people buried there. My Ancestor's Story is a nicely done private effort to share New Zealand family history stories online.
Outside of genealogy is a range of content focused on diverse aspects of New Zealand's past. The New Zealand history pool on Flickr has nearly 2,000 images from our past online. The Early New Zealand Software database and the State of the Ark, an online computer collection belonging to Donovan Marshall, document New Zealand's software and hardware past.
A picnic scene from a digitised postcard in Flickr's New Zealand history pool
In the commercial arena, Fletcher Building Ltd support the Fletcher Challenge archives and an online digital collection of the past 100 years of Fletcher construction. For some time, Colonial CD Books has been focused on digitising out of copyright heritage publications from the NZ Gazette through to local histories, and making them available for sale online. Even overseas digital publishers like Lulu enable Kiwis to digitally publish family histories or other New Zealand stories for print or download, such as The Randall Family in New Zealand by Randall McMullan.
Digitisation is changing the face of our heritage, whether institutions are involved or not. What we need to learn more about is the relationship between amateur and professional effort in creating and maintaining digitised heritage. Archives and museums are already receiving digitised materials from donors in forms that are unusable or poor quality. The challenge is for institutions to create a lifelong relationship with communities and future donors so that digital content remains usable and originals being digitised are protected. Perhaps part of our future requires solutions like community-based repositories, already being demonstrated with the pioneers in this area, Kete Horowhenua.
3 comments | Post a comment Leave a comment
Posted by paul | 13 Jul 2009 08:09
The phrase "amateur and professional " seems a bit wrong - even arrogant. Maybe "formal and informal" works better. Many of these people outside the institutions have knowledge way beyond what is inside yet they are often derided.
A lot of compelling material in formal collections has always been user generated (what a feeble phrase) - look at broadsheets, posters, flyers.
What is "poor quality"? - broadcast media can use cellphone movies - yet are my cellphone images not good enough. What about the snapshots taken after Napier earthquake.
I know what you are trying to say - the challenge of partnering and harnessing the crowd - and the challenges it brings - the fear of the so called "real researcher" versus the everybody.
They are your walls - not mine!
Posted by Lewis Brown | 13 Jul 2009 09:45
I agree totally that many people outside institutions have knowledge far beyond those inside - that was in part the point of the post.
I hesitate to use formal and informal perhaps for the same reasons you don't like amateur and professional - it risks devaluing informal knowledge as somehow less authoritative. For me the key difference between amateur and professional is the latter makes their living from collections, while the former doesn't.
Poor quality in digitisation are e.g. low bit-rate mp3s of oral histories where the speaker is inaudible; jpgs of detailed scenes scanned at 72dpi; a cellphone movie re-encoded making the content unintelligible.
I confess to working inside some of the thickest concrete walls in the country!
Posted by KaeLewis | 16 Jul 2009 10:13
The problem has always been that the 'professionals' have not been digitalizing fast enough, so that the so-called amateurs have taken things into their own hands. Most amateurs are highly specialized in their interests and that's why their knowledge usually exceeds that of the professionals they consult. Do not underestimate amateurs.
There is no time to be lost with transcription of old records. The generations to come are not going to be able to read handwriting. My own son aged 19 cannot read a handwritten letter. He has used a laptop all his life, from kindergarten where he had only cursory handwriting lessons, until now at university where he has no need of paper at all. His teachers post assignments and accept his work online, he takes notes in class on his laptop. His text books are on DVDs. He reads and writes digitally and doesnt own a pen or pencil. Mark my words, in 50 years, when our generation are gone, the majority of the population will be totally handwriting-illiterate. For instance my son could not read his grandfather's will, so if someone doesnt transcribe it now, it will be lost to him and his descendants. The same goes for the birth, death and marriage records and everything held by Archives NZ. If its not digitalized now, it will lost to all but a few experts. And if it is not digitalized by 2050, I predict it never will be. Where will we find the army of transcribers we can recruit amongst the general population these days? There is no time to loose. Those behind the walls need to acknowledge that they need help, and fast. And they need to get round all the copyright obstacles that are placed in the way of digitalization and transcription of old records, especially old government handwritten records. Transcribers need more help from the experts if we are ever going to get the job done. And dont write them off as 'poor quality' and 'amateurist' until you have looked carefully at the quality of transcription work that is going on every day in New Zealand.
Kae Lewis
www.kaelewis.com
www.thetreasury.org.nz